Episode 500: Billionaire Ted

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Well, you know, that's not a real. There's no box of gimmicks. Rumor and innuendo. I don't deal in rumor and innuendo. And was he there? I was there. I don't give a shit. What? I think I'm wrapping up. Something to wrestle with. Something to wrestle with. Ding it. Bruce Prichard. Hey, it's Conrad the Mortgage Guy And you're listening to Something to Wrestle With Bruce Pritchard Bruce, what's going on, man? How are you? It's another day in paradise, by God Well, I'm excited to be with you We've got a fun topic planned for everybody today Billionaire Ted This is a topic that we've all touched on A little bit here and there But never done really a deep dive When I first say billionaire Ted to you, Bruce What's the first thing you think of? a guy walking around in gray hair and a shitty mustache and doing a bad southern accent. When you think about all the magic that you created in WWE through the years, Billionaire Ted probably not in the top 100 or even 1,000 ideas. Fair to say? Yeah, thank God I didn't create it. So yes. I ain't going to take any credit for that one. It was, you know, look, And, again, I think there's this myth or this feeling of, man, this was something that just kind of happened, that came from a goof that was like, oh, hey, what if we did something with this guy? and he was a guy that that was at a party that then David Sahadi and Chris Chambers who lived together had a party invited him there he dressed up as billionaire Ted and walked around as billionaire Ted and there he is that's the party and um he he never wrote character and then it was shown to Vince and he was like, oh hey, we can do something with this. And the ensuing billionaire TED skits were what followed. And they quickly disappeared. So it was like, yeah, it was one of those moments in time that was in my view embarrassing. Didn't need to go there. I felt it was we did everything that we did against the grain of what we would normally do, and it was just not good in any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, I mean, I think we all kind of agree. I mean, I know as fans, I mean, listen, it was a cute one-off, but it felt like it went forever. You know, it started in early 1996, January, and then we're going to close it out right before you get married. WrestleMania 12, so March of 96. But it runs every week for like three months. And it was interesting, and that's why I want to do a deep dive on it today, because it is kind of an about face from the way Vince normally handled this sort of thing. I guess we should start right at the top. I appreciate you saying that, hey, this was just a friend of the crew, Sahadi and Chambers. No, it wasn't your friend. It was a guy they saw at a party doing Billionaire Ted. They invited their party to do Billionaire Ted. What are you doing? I know that these skits start in January. Was this a holiday party, do you think, like November, December? No, this was just a party that Chris and Dave had sometime in the summer. And it wasn't a company party at all. It was their party at their house. And some of our listeners don't know who that you're you're hugging up there. Tell everybody. That's Chris Chambers. So Chris, Chris was producer and great guy. But it just was no, they just had a party and had this guy come and walk around doing billionaire. Ted is a goof. And that was, you know, unfortunately, that's how things happen sometimes. I kind of dig it. You know, the story of how this all happened, it's so organic. I didn't know that. Our research, we found that the billionaire Ted Carrecker was portrayed by James Flaherty. If you throw him in your IMDb, you'll see that he's got a handful of acting credits. He did Law & Order Special Victims Unit. Another episode of Law & Order, he was a court clerk and maybe a doorman. I guess he did three episodes there. He was in an episode of The Chappelle Show way back in 2003 where he played George W. Bush. The next year in 2004, he was in the Cold Cuts episode of The Sopranos. But what most wrestling fans know him best for is the portrayal of Billionaire Ted. Of course, that went down way back in 1996. James Flaherty is his real name, though. You already told me more about him than I ever knew. I never ever in the picture you saw without I've never seen him without being dressed up as Billionaire Ted so every interaction you had with him he had the mustache on and the whole deal yes and was doing the bit he was committed to the bit so you know it was like you dealt with Billionaire Ted and that's who it was it wasn't it wasn't an actor That was his character That was his gimmick That's how he portrayed it And Again I never saw him Go in and get makeup Never saw him Without the shit on Ever Didn't know anything else he'd ever done Other than he was just the guy that did This billionaire Ted skit If you weren't watching wrestling Back then let us explain Ted Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions in late 1988 from Jim Crockett Jr. And of course, Ted Turner had made his fortune in the cable news business. I guess before that, they were rotating billboards, before digital billboards. But he had CNN, TBS, TNT, and Rasslin had been on WTBS, the superstation, for a long time. So when he saw the opportunity to get in the Rasslin business, he jumped at the chance. So that's kind of a famous, well-worn story. Bruce, as you've heard the story, when Ted acquired Jim Crockett Promotions, is the rumor true that he'd pick up the phone and call Vince McMahon? Sure did. Vince, I'm in the wrestling business. He said, well, congratulations, we're in the sports entertainment business. Don't care. You know, but Ted always, I think Ted always fancied himself being in the wrestling business from day one on the Superstation. Wrestling on TVS, Channel 17 was the strongest wrestling television show in the nation at one time because they were on cable and they were the only wrestling available for a period of time on cable. And the penetration of the Superstation was phenomenal. So Ted, I think, always viewed himself as being in the wrestling business. And without Ted Turner, you know, I don't think that the wrestling business per se, and especially the NWA and the Georgia group, would have gotten as big. And they were, man, you could bring in Tommy Rich or a Dick Slater or even a wrestling two. somebody off of that superstation and pop a house easily anywhere in the country because everybody got their local TV but you're a wrestling fan and you had cable you also watch WTBS the other part of that is unfortunately for those of us who didn't have cable had no clue who any of these people were so in Texas I don't think we got cable in Houston until probably 1981, 82 maybe. So we were late to the game. There were a lot of other people. The cable was a fad. Who's going to want to put a cable in their home to watch television? Got a goddamn antenna. I actually had someone come up to me recently. A young kid. He's like maybe 24, maybe 25. Oh my God, I got this TV. and got it and it's got this thing and you put it on it and you get all of the local, you get all the channels all the local channels, everything for free! I'm waiting for the bit. And there was no bit. He was astonished. There was a television set that he could buy. It had this thing that you could hook up to the back of the TV that could get you all the local television programming for free. In HD. I looked at him and said, yeah, it's called broadcast television. Everybody can get that. He thought he had bought a special TV. The thought of cable was met with everything else, like streaming and everything else that will come to pass. Nobody wants that. Nobody's going to pay money? Pay money? a monthly subscription to watch TV? Not a millionaire. I'm not going to do that. Stupid idea. And by God, now cable's obsolete. Streaming's the thing. Streaming's about to be obsolete. Probably go back to cable. Who knows? But, yeah, it's no, I don't think any of them are obsolete. I think that you just have more choices now. But at the time, It was, you know, wasn't welcomed with open arms. Let's backdate a little bit. Before the acquisition of Jim Crockett Promotions, I think they had some interactions when Vince bought time on WTBS, when he essentially bought out the Georgia territory. Did you ever have any conversations with Vince about Black Saturday, or as Gerald Briscoe would call it? Vince did not buy time. Vince took over the time slot that was Georgia Championship Wrestling. So Georgia Championship Wrestling had that time slot and had a contract with Ted Turner and WTBS. So by buying the company and owning the company then, and owning the stock of Georgia Championship Wrestling, they had that time slot. He didn't pay anything for it. He paid the stockholders that he bought and got controlling interest. But that wasn't like going in and buying time or anything like that. No, he didn't pay Ted Turner for it, but he did buy his way on the TBS. And he bought the company. Yes. And why did he buy the company, Bruce? Was he really interested in running Albany, Georgia, or did he want to be on TBS? I think he wanted, well, a lot of things. He wanted the TV. He also wanted some of the talent as well. So that was a stronghold that had great television, local markets, and TBS as well. We know ultimately he would wind up selling that contract back to Jim Crockett Promotions to help fund WrestleMania. And the narrative was that even back then, we're talking late 84, early 85, Vince and Ted seemingly didn't get along. Do you have any context to that? Yeah, hated each other. Ted wanted a part of the company. Ted not only wanted a part of Georgia, Ted wanted a part of the WWF. And told Vince that in order for him to be on his station, that Ted needed to have an ownership stake in the WWF and wanted to be partners. And Vince was like, yeah, I don't want any partners. Don't have any partners, not going to have any partners. and Ted was like, well, then you'll not be on the TV. He's like, well, we've got a deal. And then at the point of selling it to Crockett, it was I'll sell it to someone that might be more suitable for your television station here and sold it to Crockett. But the blow up was Ted wanting to be a partner with Vince in the WWF and wanted to be a partner at WrestleMania and wanted to be a partner of all this stuff. Vince had no desire for that. He's like, hey, we'll provide you television. We'll do everything that was in the deal with Georgia Championship Wrestling and we'll provide you the same things they were providing you as that company. But Turner wanted more and Vince had no desire to give him any more. It feels like they got off on the wrong foot. As the legend goes, you know, I think Vince thought by buying Georgia, he was going to have some sort of exclusive for wrestling. But I guess WTBS and Ted fielded some negative complaints from viewers who wanted to know where their wrestling went. So Ted did put other promotions on TBS. Vince probably felt maybe betrayed by that. Ultimately, it all worked out. He got a million dollars out of the Crockett's who actually went down to the bank and got a loan. and Crockett had an incredibly profitable 1985 and 86 and Vince McMahon had WrestleMania. So it worked out. Fast forward, ultimately, the Crocketts are not able to pull the nose up on the thing and wind up selling out to Ted Turner. That's when the infamous I'm in the wrestling business call happens. We know that was late 88. WCW, as it's now known, lost money in 89. in 90, 91, 92, 93, and 94, and they finally made a profit in 95. And we're going to talk about how it got there. But one of the things I wanted to ask you as we're talking about the background for the Billionaire Ted story is Dave Meltzer reported in 96 that, as he's covering the Billionaire Ted piece, well, here's the exact line in The Observer. McMahon is portraying this as if Turner has a vendetta against him because several times over the years there were either strong suggestions or outright conversations by Turner or his minions to McMahon wanting to either buy into or buy the company in total, all of which were rebuffed. McMahon also rebuffed various TBS officials over the years when they proposed the idea of doing a joint pay-per-view show. At one point, Bill Shaw offered McMahon complete control of all the finishes if they were to do a joint show, so McMahon could have had a clean sweep of WWF victories on a card of interpromotional dream matches but McMahon turned down the offer because he wanted to keep his company separate in the public eye man that's pretty wild I know that Vince was never going to sell so that's even a silly conversation to go down but chat me up about the Super Bowl of Wrestling pay-per-view proposal do you remember hearing about this? There were so many horseshit ideas that came across. I think, look, it all goes back to the initial, give me part of your company to be on my station. And I don't want part of Georgia. I want WWF. I think that always stuck in Vince's Craw. And again, WCW was losing money. and they weren't doing good business. So Vince, why would he want to be a part of that? It was, all it did was raise them up, possibly bring the WWF down. So, no, that wasn't, it was an idea that was never going to happen. But that was the only play they had in the playbook. Once upon a time during all this billionaire Ted stuff, we'll call it Q1 of 96, Vince McMahon was in pretty regular correspondence with The Observer and The Torch. He actually spoke with Wade Keller. And Wade had an excerpt here from The Torch I wanted to share. Crockett was near bankruptcy. Turner, in order to keep his highly rated wrestling time slots filled, bought Jim Crockett promotions. Since then, for eight years, Turner's World Championship Wrestling tried to compete with the WWF. as several vice presidents failed to lead WCW into the black. And while a revolving door of Booker's came and went, Turner tried to buy out or at least work with the WWF. And here's an exact quote from Vince. Jack Petrick, Bill Shaw, and Rex Lenard all inquired on behalf of Ted Turner proposing a Super Bowl of wrestling type cards or trying to buy us out. Finally, he was convinced the answer was no. Then he got nasty and predatory. If you had to pinpoint a timeline, and I know this is just you guessing probably at this point, would that be 90, 91, 92, 93? When do you think that hypothetically would have happened? From day one. I mean, look, it wasn't like it was any, there were several. It wasn't like there was just one offer or one, hey, let's have a Super Bowl. It was over time. And it was constantly, hey, let's do something together. Wouldn't it be so much bigger if we combined forces and did these big pay-per-view shows? I think, again, the feeling being that, well, that helps them, doesn't help us. And so there was, I would say, during the whole time, you know, and yes, Ted got angrier and angrier. You look at Ted's business models of what he has done over the years. Extremely successful. A brilliant, brilliant guy. I mean, look, he's got coconut balls. He is not afraid to spend money, and he sure as hell isn't afraid to gamble. so Ted you know through all of his business feelings and you go from the Braves and just the stations that he purchased the CNN experiment that became you know holy shit we've got a 24 hour news channel that became the norm I think that Ted Turner was truly a genius it's interesting when you read, or not when you read, when you watch the different documentaries about Ted Turner, nobody ever talks about wrestling. Ever. And that was one of Ted's passions. Was the wrestling. He loved it. It was good locally for 17 in Atlanta. It was good on his, when he went nationwide with the cable. So the either Ted just really didn't love it that much. I believe he did. I don't think that I don't think that wrestling would have lasted as long if Ted didn't love it. And so Ted was, man, he was willing to be in it for the long haul. And I applaud that. I applaud his tenacity and his never-say-die attitude. That, you know, that is something for me to be commended. But you know, at a time, like all things happen. All things come to an end eventually. And I think that Ted selling Time Warner and everything else that happened after that and it all went away, that's shit that happens. and if Ted had been completely in charge, I don't know that some of those things would happen. I don't know that he would have gotten rid of all the things that Time Warner did. So it's just Ted was persistent. He was persistent and wouldn't take no for an answer. But sometimes the answer is no. when you talk to eric bischoff eric plays out that ted was not all that involved in the day-to-day operations of wcw sure he owned the thing but he had bigger fish to fry how cognizant of that was vince back then do you think do you think vince assumed that ted was more hands-on because he was i don't know i i really don't know i don't and i don't know how much I know Ted put people in charge of things that he trusted. Right. But I'm sure that Ted was still in touch with them probably on a daily basis and being informed. I think that maybe from their point of view, the Jack Petricks, Jim Hurds, all those folks probably painted the picture that they wanted to paint for Ted. Ted likes it so I'm going to paint it in a way that is not going to get me in trouble that gives him hope that is going to just keep things running as long as we don't lose too much money and you know this has come out I don't know it will forever be the mystery as to WCW being the that junket that just hey, we're losing money over here. We took a big loss. We'll put it in WCW's budget. You know, that happens in big corporations. There's nothing you can do about it. When it comes time to say, all right, who's losing money? Good God, look at this bleeding WCW. Now, they weren't making money. I don't know. I don't know who will ever be able to tell us just how badly they really were bleeding. Maybe they were. I don't know. But I've also heard that that was the pit where they just threw all their losing ventures and that happened on WCW's budget. And that's corporate world. Hey, man, does your company still use fuel cards? Have you ever tried calling your old fuel card company? you know how it goes long hold lines no answers somehow the fees keep going up well coast pay will actually pick up the phone and solve the problem and keep your fleet moving coast pay is a modern fuel card an expense management tool built for fleets this isn't software built by someone who's never actually run a crew your fuel your maintenance your materials they're now all on one card with real control and instant visibility set real-time spending limits for every driver or vehicle? Is it fuel only? Is it fuel and materials? Are there certain days or certain hours? You see, you decide and then Coast enforces it. You see every transaction the very moment it happens. So there's no end of the month surprises. 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Terms apply. That's coastpay.com slash Bruce. The Coast Visa Commercial Credit Card is issued by Celtic Bank. All card accounts subject to credit approval. So we know they don't get off to the best foot in 84. Vince acquiesces the TBS opportunity in 85 Ted buys it out in 88 And makes a call to Vince And I guess there's overtures for a few years But it does feel like And I know most people assume that Nitro is the straw that broke the camel's back But I want to backtrack a little bit Because before that even happens Hulk Hogan makes the jump And I gotta feel like again, I don't know Vince McMahon, but Vince had to take that personally a little bit, does he not? When Hulk Hogan leaves, I'm sure there's hurt feelings when all of a sudden he finds out, Vince being he, pronoun's boy, damn it, Hulk Hogan's on Ted Turner's show now? Like, I'm sure that Vince was upset with not only Hulk, but Ted about that too, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. He was hurt and upset, but also, you know, he can make excuses for Hulk. Hulk's doing Thunder and Paradise. He's down there. They're associated with folks at TBS and TNT and all that other stuff. So it's like, okay, I can understand that. Mis vantage point. God damn it, you know. Fuck that. But it was, look, Hulk made the decision. No different than Randy made the decision. No different than Bobby Heenan and Gene Oakland made the decision to leave. so that is what it is and those guys made those decisions to leave because for Bobby Heenan so that he could get be an employee and get medical insurance Bobby had a guarantee here, Bobby was paid as a commentator but he wasn't an employee Savage that was a lure of money Hulk that was a lure of money guaranteed money and in a great look for Hulk again people bitch about Hulk's deal and when you're giving him the amount of money you're giving him for merchandise sales people go oh nobody else had that well nobody else sold the amount of merchandise that Hulk Hogan sold so get over it your argument doesn't hold any water because if Hulk sold the amount of merchandise he had to sell to make that kind of money, then good for him and it's better for the company because Hulk sold more merchandise than everybody on the roster combined. And in business you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, right? Yeah, exactly. So these are all driving me nuts. Sorry. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, the transition period. Because when Hulk Hogan makes the jump to WCW, almost immediately they announce that they're going to do the dream match. Hulk Hogan versus Ric Flair. A lot of people thought maybe it was going to happen at WrestleMania in 92. It actually happened in July of 94 for WCW. But at that press conference, it's really one of the first times we see Ted Turner on WCW-TV. Now, granted, he could have gone down to any of these shows, I'm sure. And I know he did make the occasional appearance when he popped in at center stage or what have you. But he wants to make sure he's front and center to showcase this dream match of Hulk Hogan versus Ric Flair. Probably because he had been low-key pitching that to Vince McMahon since the late 80s. and now he's going to make it happen with Vince's top star, but in his promotion. Just the idea. I have to say, as a fan, for years and years, I always thought, man, this must be a big deal because Ted Turner's there. But in reality, that was probably a personal little jab, or at least Vince would feel that way, right? I mean, I think, no, to Vince, I think he was like, yeah, we already did that. It didn't drop. So I was like, okay, maybe your dream match. but it's been done it isn't the first time it's already been done and okay great but I don't know I don't know that that was nobody cared that Ted Turner was on TV and I don't think that the personal stuff came with the blank check books and the throwing all the money behind it and again say what you will it's business. That's what happens in business. So you're mad at it because, well, at that point, Ted had a bigger checkbook. We know the next big step is going to be the macho man following suit. I think as the story goes, and I want you to correct this, but the way I understand it is Savage still wanted to compete in the ring, and Vince saw him more as an ambassador and being one of the voices on the show and wanted him to do commentary and be the face behind the scenes and out front at PR events and things like that. But maybe he was going to go with a younger star. And I guess Savage took that as an opportunity to think, hey, I can get a pretty good deal over here and still wrestle. So now he's lost not just his top star from the 80s, but his second top star from the 80s. And they're both going to work with Ted Turner. and of course we're going to talk about the billionaire Ted skits. They heavily feature those three guys, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and of course Ted Turner. The other name in there, though, that you guys had a little fun with was Scheme Gene. That's, of course, a knock at Mean Gene Okerlund. But Gene didn't leave on any sort of sour note, did he? He just left. I mean, again, it was contract negotiations and came up, and they offered him more money and less days. So he left. But, you know, going back to the whole Randy Savage thing, You know, that is a narrative that has been out there for a long time. Oh, Randy wanted to work. We didn't want him to work. I am telling you from 100% personal experience with Randy Savage, from Randy's own mouth, I don't want to take any more bumps. I want to work behind the scenes. I want to be over here doing this. I want my career to last. I didn't want his career to last. he wasn't, didn't want to take bumps anymore. He didn't want to work anymore. At least that is what he was telling us. And by us, me, Vince, Pat. Those were his words. Not a narrative that he may have told them down there. It's like, oh, they won't let me work. They won't do this. Because every time that and this I don think this wasn shoved in our face as well that if someone got injured who do you send You send Randy as the replacement because you not going to get a much better replacement than Randy Savage if Top Babyface is injured on the car. So Savage going in and he went, oh, yeah, you need the old timer, huh? Yeah, he does soft his boots and come in. Well, you know, not what I want to be doing. so while he may have fed that narrative to some people I am telling you for a fact he did not sell that narrative to us and to us, myself, to Pat and to Vince he wanted to work behind the scenes he liked his gig at least he told us that he liked his gig as a commentator and he liked doing the things behind the scenes He moved to Stanford so that he could be in the office, so that he could be there every day. It doesn't sound like a guy that wants to go out on the road and work all the time. He made the move. He got an apartment. He was living up here. So, again, when I hear that narrative, it makes me bristle because he wasn't completely honest with us So he wasn't completely honest with them. Nonetheless, whatever reasons that only Randy knows, he left. We know that the announcement of Nitro is going to be a big one for pro wrestling. Not only is WCW going to have a live show in primetime, but it's going to be head-to-head with Monday Night Raw. and I'm curious, do you think Vince knew that Ted Turner was the driver behind that, you know, being head-to-head component, or did it even matter to Vince? Well, Ted had to be the driving force behind him because Ted was in control of the network and in control of giving them prime time up against us. Ted did control that, and Ted could control that and had people that did it. And it was Ted's decision. So, yes, you don't think that somebody else is going to go, oh, hey, Ted, we want to rearrange our prime time slots on Monday nights and put a television wrestling show here. That's got to be with Ted's blessing, if not Ted's idea. Of course, that would have happened in the summer of 95, the announcement, that is. So that lines up when Chambers and Sahadi had Billionaire Ted at their party, which is kind of fun. Let's go to December of 95. There's an AOL chat with Vince McMahon. It happened on December 11, 1995, and he's going to be asked about WCW. And he says, Ted Turner is a billionaire. He offers large sums of money to talent just so they will not perform with the WWF. Ted Turner continues to lose millions and millions of dollars in an attempt to drive the WWF out of business. Even though we were interested in Public Enemy, the creative forces at WCW will not have a clue how to market them. They have no original ideas at all. Since Public Enemy has never been to the WWF before, WCW will not be able to steal WWF concepts, as they repeatedly do over and over again. The large sum of money, research shows, is around $85,000 a year, the public in a meeting for. He was asked in this same AOL chat, would there be another Saturday night's main event? And Vince said something like, there are a lot of somewhat revolutionary concepts being discussed at this moment. However, I'm not at liberty to discuss them openly because they would be copied immediately by Ted Turner's wrestling group. Later, of course, Vince and Linda would understandably profile at the NWO storyline. There's an implication that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were invading WCW on behalf of the WWF. Coincidentally, we know that Turner settled that lawsuit for about the same amount of money that Vince bought WCW in the end. So Vince did have the last laugh, but it's clear that he was frustrated. And I think some of Vince's critics through the years have said, hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. You did this to all the territory guys, and you had more money. And Vince would argue that during this discourse with Dave Meltzer and Wade Keller, he would say, no, no, I was competing with wrestling dollars. I couldn't afford to run at a loss and be under the umbrella of CNN. Some people would say, eh, I don't know if that argument holds water. So what would he be operating under then? well I'm just saying in terms of Vince was able to pull national versus these regional territories so I mean isn't that kind of the same thing but he didn't have a billion dollar company behind him doing it that was him doing it with the WWF it wasn't it wasn't NBC Universal owning the company and doing it that was one guy doing it that wasn't a big corporation doing that. Your equivalent would be if NBC Universal owned the WWF, then that would be an equivalent. We didn't have the networks, and it was a completely different time and different way that business was. If you got on cable television or any television at that time, a lot of time it was with a barter where you had to sell advertising. You got to keep your advertising. They kept their advertising. And that's how you made money. You never write C, but be able to have a company that is the television company that has stations that can put you on and does that. That's completely different. I hear what you're saying, but didn't Vince do that to bodybuilding? Didn't he do what to bodybuilding? Ono have a network? No, I'm saying when he came into the WBF and created the WBF, he started opening the checkbook and paying bodybuilders a lot more money than all the other existing competitors could, and he used his WWE platform to promote the WBF body stars. Isn't that the same thing? No, Conrad, he didn't. Again, that was Vince McMahon doing it. That wasn't a huge... television company doing that or you know a billion dollar company that had all of these outlets to do that that was one guy going up against one guy that was vince and joe weeder no but but he used his wwf platform to promote the wbf he used profits to pay the wbf yes because it was all but again that was one company it wasn't going you're trying to say oh well, WWF, put it on there. That's not... You're trying to say that we were able to get network time because we owned... No, I'm not saying anything about network time. I'm talking about dollars. Again, we do anything that we were in conjunction with, that we were promoting, that we owned, that everything cross-pollinated. Because it was the same company. But isn't that true of Ted Turner and WCW and CNN? and the brave. Why are we talking about CNN? What they do on CNN? I'm talking about Ted Turner owned the stations. Okay. He owned the network and he could put anything on anytime. We didn't own a network. We couldn't put anything on at any time. I'm not talking about a network. I'm talking about the open. Well, I am. I'm talking apples to apples. You're talking apples to pomegranates. I'm talking open checkbook to open checkbook. You know, Vince is saying, hey, he can afford to pay the public enemy large sums of money because he's got CNN. Joe Weider was paying guys a whole hell of a lot more. WBS far more than their competitors. No, all they did, all they did, all they did was give them a year round work and put them in. And yes, they gave them guaranteed contracts and Joe Weider had, gave them contracts that was based on their endorsements and what they want. and it was controlled by them. Again, that's one guy versus one guy in a genre. But I'm saying Vince did not build his bodybuilding business based on his bodybuilding profits. That's sort of what Vince is laying out here. Hey, I have to compete with my wrestling dollars. Okay, great. Okay. Yeah, wrestling dollars that he built. okay and again you're talking about if Ted Turner had done that and put it on all of his different channels that he owns we couldn't do that we did not have that kind of distribution we didn't have that kind of power do you have a company that could buy another company yes and he did it and he did it alone he didn't do it and then put it on all of his different stations and again that's what that's what Ted did And he's fucking business. That's what he did. So it was smart for him. I'm not knocking what Ted did. I'm just saying it's not the same. That is not the same. If Ted Turner had gone out and bought Joe Weider and then put Joe Weider all over TNT and TBS and CNN and Headline News, a little different playing field because he doesn't have to go out and get that and sell that. He can just put it off. We couldn't do that. We had to go out, we had to sell it, and then we had to get advertisers for it to make it profitable. It didn't, it ended up not being profitable and died in two years. Yeah, as a reminder, the bodybuilders of the WBF got guaranteed contracts based on the profits from the WWF, and the wrestlers who worked there did not have guaranteed contracts. So you know that? You've seen the business plan that they got all of it off of WWF because it was a separate company? I'm with you. No, you just said, you know, for a fact. I didn't say I know for a fact. You just stated it as if it was fact. It wasn't fact. It was a separate company. Where did Vince get the money to pay for the WWF, if not the WWF? What were his other successful business ventures that would have afforded him? Well, I'm sure it was from money he made in the WWF. That's what I said. Where do you get your money from? So everything that you do is just mortgage-based. Okay. I mean, we're saying the same thing. I mean, you're trying to paint it as big, bad, big, bad Vince. No, I'm not. Yeah, you are. No, I'm not at all. You're stating things as if. And it's not as if. It's like the XFL was a separate company. Yes, we fucking cross-promoted XFL, all that shit. Yes, Vince owned a separate company. So the money was from Vince's money. Vince made a lot of money. Vince has different businesses. Always has. So if one took a loss, it didn't affect, didn't go off of WWF's books. went off of the books of that company. Condense finance through business money. I don't know why that's so hard to understand because you want it to be under the WWF umbrella. That's not hard to understand. I'm just saying Ted Turner's doing the exact same thing here. But Ted has more assets. That's Ted has a company that has television, that owns television. And I'm not saying what Ted did was bad. No, I'm saying your playing field is not even. It's not the same. We couldn't just say, hey, we want to put our television show on primetime, on NBC, on Monday nights. We couldn't do that. Ted could. That's the difference. Joe Weider couldn't afford to pay his bodybuilders guaranteed contracts. That's Joe Weider's problem, Len. I'm not talking about Joe Weider. I don't give a fuck about Joe Weider or the WBS. Nobody does. That's why it went under. You know, once upon a time, I used to think electrolytes were only for athletes and summer workouts. But starting this year, drip drop is my secret reset button. When I'm hydrated, my brain just clicks. My mood, my focus, my motivation. I noticed they all instantly improve. Drip Drop is a doctor-developed, proven fast hydration that helps your body and mind work better, which is exactly what 2026U needs. Think about it. Clearer focus, better energy, elevated mood, even that fresh skin glow, all possible with Drip Drop. It uses a precise ratio of electrolytes and glucose for rapid absorption, delivering three times the electrolytes and half the sugar of the leading sports drinks. So you feel results fast without the sugar crash. 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The promo code is WRESTLE, and you'll get 20% off. Stock up now at dripdrop.com and use the promo code WRESTLE. Let's talk about this AOL chat with Vince. He says, I would be less than honest if I did not state that I was upset when Ted Turner chose to present its Monday night show head-to-head with Raw. That showed no regard at all for the wrestling fans here in the U.S. The postulation that Ted is attempting to grow the audience is absurd. Billionaire Ted not only owns a wrestling company, but owns TV networks as well. He can place his Nitro show on any night at any hour if he wanted to grow the audience. Once again, if Ted has his way, he will attempt to hurt the WWF by dividing fan loyalty and not offering his product on a network at a time which would not be competitive. Once again, Ted and WCW have stolen an idea from the WWF. The WWF made Monday Night Raw one of the most popular TV programs ever. Eric Bischoff simply seems to be carrying out the greedy, selfish vitriol of billionaire Ted. That's the first time that we would hear Vince use the phrase billionaire Ted. But it does make me smile. Oh, this poor guy's not considering the wrestling fans. that's an interesting line yeah you're splitting the audience you know you're asking the audience to choose at that point so but Vince loves that what's that? but Vince loves that doesn't he? not splitting the audience no but at the same time look if they felt their product was better and their product became better and won and then lost but the fact of the matter is I think they may have had a better chance of growing the brand on another night but they went head to head and they grew and they fucking created controversy and they fucking kicked ass and I don't know but again you can't compare it because we didn't have that opportunity we couldn't just go to USA and say Like, hey, put us head-to-head against Saturday TBS. We couldn't do that. They could. They could move to any station anytime they wanted to. We couldn't. So not going to battle what they did. And, you know, that wasn't Eric's decision. That was Ted's decision. Right. You know, he got told that. And, again, I applaud Eric for the creative and the tenacity and the fight that he had. to take it where he took it. That, you know, and had a lot of resources to do that with. So good for them. That's business. You know, that's what happens in business. I just think it's interesting that Vince is saying, oh, he doesn't care about the wrestling fans. Well, Conrad, you're going to say that when you're sitting there and you're the show, you're the big dog somebody comes in and puts a show good bad or indifferent right up against it and you're then spitting your audience regardless they're going to take 50% of the audience to go sample that and even if it's 20% it's going to be a sampling that's going to go over of course you're going to feel that if you're not you're not human you're going to go okay well gosh let's go split the audience well we should only have 50% anyway you're going to fight you're going to say that shit No, of course, I'm not arguing what they did because, again, what you know, look what they did proved out to be successful for them for 84 weeks. I'm just saying I absolutely love that Vince said it because this is what you're supposed to say in an argument at this point. But we know when the rubber hit the road in 2019, he moved NXT to Wednesdays. He likes to compete. And if we're honest, that's good for business. And every almost every time I go to, there's a Home Depot next to a Lowe's. There's a Burger King next to a McDonald's. There's a stretch of highway here not too far from my house called Gasoline Alley. There's like five gas stations. So there is an argument in business that putting these near each other is good for everybody. So, but Vince. We would hope so. Yes, we would hope so. Here's another quote from Vince. Unfortunately, we do not own networks and do not have the luxury of moving raw on a whim. However, as a service to wrestling fans here in the U.S., if I had my druthers, I would choose some other time rather than to divide the wrestling audience in two. I wouldn't mind being the first person to blink because in doing so, the WWF would once again display its caring for wrestling fans. I like this. He's playing the home team here. And at the very beginning, early on in the Monday Night Wars, you guys did try seemingly some one-offs of a Thursday Night Raw. was that to test the waters and see how it would be received like if Monday Nitro comes in was there ever a serious conversation about what if we move to a Thursday because I know it was tried a couple of times whether it was forced or not but because of preemptions right hey let's go to Thursday night and try that preemptions there's never a good moving days sucks because now the audience is they're sitting there, they're going for your show, your show and you're looking at a dog show for tennis. I'm going to go find wrestling. I'm going to go over there and they may have something that's interesting that's going to make me want to come back. So it wasn't an experiment. Let's try Thursday Night Raw. No, that was because of the dog show and tennis. Yeah. I guess my question is, if those ratings would have been bigger would have made sense to at least explore right well they weren't and they wouldn't have been because we had established monday night we had been on monday night that point for i don't know how many years with from prime time well we were on monday night long before raw we were on monday night primetime wrestling for many many many many many years talking about hulk hogan in this same AOL chat. Vince says, It hurt me. It's no secret that at one time, Hulk and I were close friends. I now know that was only a one-way friendship. Based on his comments, I would suggest he appears to be a very selfish and shallow human being who believes that he can con wrestling fans into thinking he was as great as he once was years ago. Boy, a lot of hurt feelings here. Oh, yeah. Not too far removed from the whole steroid trial thing, but this signing with WCW, boy, this is all over Vince here, is it not? Yeah, it was all the above. It really was. It was all the above. It just was, he was hurt. And he was hurt, he was mad, and that's what it was. there's even a line here that i want to make sure i get right where he's asked about this is much later he did an interview with wade um and he was asked about if he would ever entertain the idea of working with hulk hogan or randy savage again and vince said that's an easy one no i have no idea why i'd like to do business with them again they shook my hand and said i'm with you forever no amount of money not even for a million dollars would i ever work with them again now this is happening at a time when polk hogan is trying on wcw programming to do the dark side of polkmania so he's wearing all black but it's not the nwo but he is taking shots at new york and things like that and everybody who's paying attention knows that he's talking about vince did Vince see all of that I mean he wasn't actually watching Nitro does someone tell him that or does he watch it somebody probably told him yeah it's interesting to me that you know I think we sometimes forget besides Vince being a television character and a great businessman he's also a human being and that's something that I think a lot of people just miss every now and again don't you think yeah absolutely You think because somebody is the way they are in business that they have no actual feelings. They don't have a family. They don't have any human emotion. And he's human just like all the rest of us. 95 is also the time period, going back to that AOL chat from December 11th, 95, where the Giant has debuted for WCW. And if you'll recall on WCW, they were sort of suggesting that maybe Paul White was the son of Andre the Giant. And Vince took issue with that. He said it appears to be consistent with WCW's view that a sucker is born every minute. The Giant should have been allowed to stand on his own merit. But unfortunately, his image will be tarnished forever with this blatant lie. WCW treats their fans like morons. I know we didn't really touch on this, but there was a clash of the champions appearance. that really, for American wrestling fans, for a lot of them, that was actually their last time seeing Andre, where Andre was invited and appeared on TBS. We didn't spend any time talking about that, but that's probably another blow that Vince took personally, like Andre being on a competitor's station, don't you think? Absolutely. That one hit really close to home, and that hurt Vince maybe even more than Hogan. Of course, it's late 95, so steroids are a hot topic, and he's going to be asked about this on AOL. He says, yes, we at the WWF still maintain a strict policy as it relates to steroids. Ahmed Johnson is no exception, nor is anyone else. I wonder when the last legitimate steroid test was given to anyone at WCW. Of course, the reason he mentions Ahmed is he was asked, hey, that guy's big. Are you still steroid testing? So I love that Vince knows that, hey, he's been held to a higher standard when it comes to steroid testing. WCW seemingly has not And he was not shy about pointing that out Before he would do These AOL chats like this Or when he's doing them Is there a chance that a McDivitt Or some other legal representative was there With him so he could be calculated and measured In his responses or is Vince just off the top Of this? He's probably just off the top He closes the chat By saying I'm very proud that our website will debut Somewhere around Wrestlemania It'll be another first for the WWF No doubt to be copied, however, by an inferior wrestling organization Coupled with an inferior online service Which is kind of fun, because we know WCW and Bob Ryder and Prodigy was right around the corner When you really take a look at the Billionaire Ted skits They debut at the very beginning of 1996 And it's called Billionaire Ted's Rasslin' War Room and Rasslin is spelled W-R-A-S-S-L-I-N apostrophe. That is not how you spell it. It's R-A-S-S-L-I-N. That's Rasslin. Come on now. So we see Ted Turner, who we know as Mr. Flaherty, sitting at the head of a long table saying he wants to see more action and it's time to pull out all the stops. And then they air a clip of Razor Ramon's Razor's Edge. and then the executive asks the Huckster, who looks older and in obviously worse shape than the fan who imitates him at ringside on WCW programming, and he asks if he can perform the move. And Huckster says, no way, brother. Then they show Ahmed Johnson's Tiger Bomb, and they ask the Nacho Man if he can pull it off. No way, never. Then they show Diesel's Jackknife. Nacho Man says, ain't done it my entire career. Ain't about to try it now. And then a clip airs of Shawn Michaels diving off a ladder, and Huckster says, Brother, at my age, my feet don't leave the ground. And Ted asks, So tell me, boys, what can you do? Huckster and Nacho Man then pause, look at each other, and start posing and cupping their ears. And a WWF voiceover says, Can't teach old dogs new tricks. The new WWF generation on top of the hill, not over it. So kind of awesome when you think about it as a one-off. I dig it. It's fun. What can you tell us about producing that skit? I didn't do that. Those were all Sahadi and them. I hated them. Absolutely hated them. I just felt we were drawing attention to them. And you do that, and people are going to go over there and see the response. or to go see Hulk and Savage. Yeah. I just... I didn't think they were good. I just didn't think they were good for business. I didn't think that they painted our company in a good light. And again, if anything, it was, well, you know what, I don't like this because I really liked Hulk and Randy. I'm going to go over there and see them over there. I just didn't, I didn't get the, I didn't care for the, I didn't care for it because, A, there's so many things out of those. You know, this is when I knew that Razor and Diesel were gone because, you know, it was, asked them to be in one of these and they refused. I said, okay, they're gone. so you know that was that was kind of a tell there when they refused to do anything with it but again I was kind of hoping them refusing to do it would have been let's not do any more of these so yeah those of you who liked it, you liked it, great I didn't care for it Of course, Monday Night Nitro is live that night. So Eric Bischoff sees the billionaire Ted's kit during a commercial. And when he comes back, he says, we're live. We're number one. Numbers talk. Everything else walks. You know what I mean? And when he closes the program, he says, we've got the kind of convictions you like to talk about. You know what I mean? And Steve McMichael, who was a commentator at the time on Nitro, says, we've got more stars than there are in the heavens in WCW, baby. If you want to watch the Pretenders, tune in to the other channel. We've got the Contenders here, baby. And he referred to the WWF as a kitty cat league. And at some point during this same broadcast, Eric would say, this is head-to-head with the Raw Bowl, which you guys tried on Monday Night Raw. The Toilet Bowl, the smoking guns win it. It was boring to begin with. We're live. This is where the biggest boys play. Make no mistake about it. It doesn't get any bigger. It doesn't get any better. and I'm sure on some level Vince and Eric were having fun with this I'm sure Eric felt like oh we're getting to him that's kind of fun he's selling for us because Vince has never acknowledged competition like this but I'm curious what was Vince's reaction to hear how Eric sort of responded on Nitro do you recall I can't give a shit about stuff like that the bigger issue was man we were taped one week That was death. Absolute death. It sucked that we had to be paid, and we were looking for any and every way to go back and show USA, hey, need help here. We need to go live. We need to go live every week. Look, they're giving our results away. They're doing this, doing that. and that was one of the things that actually helped us, them doing that. That helped us to at least go live, whereas everything isn't out there. And again, it wasn't like it is today where as soon as it happens, it's out everywhere. But, man, you taped everything, people got it out there and you knew what it was and you're going to go watch the live show. Because they were they were giving surprises on the live show. They were doing different things. I don't think WCW was number one yet at this point either. I didn't get to be number one until they hit with the NWO shit. But, and they were competing, and they were out there, and they were doing interesting things that made me want to see, alright, what are they going to do next? How are they going to respond to this? And, again, I think I would have done the exact same shit that Bischoff did. Because he had nothing to lose. He was like, all right, let's go. I'll play, I'll play. And all he could do was go up. So that was, they were being smart. I think we were being, I think we were competing with our heart instead of our head. And getting hurt, you know what I mean? and having feelings and all that shit. And you can't have feelings in business. The last episode of September, Nitro did win 2.7 to 1.9, but your point is accurate. WWE was head-to-head and neck-to-neck. Was that when we were preempted? I don't believe so. I know you were preempted in the very first one, but I do know, you know, like, the biggest win I think that WCW had, you know, in that era, it would have been, like, mid-December. No, mid-January. I'm sorry, 3.5 for Nitro, 2.4 for Raw. But most of the weeks, it's back and forth. You know, you're within the tenth of a point. It's 2.1 to 2.3 sort of thing. So even if one side's winning and the other side's losing, it's so minuscule. Yeah, and again, that's where kind of the duplication of the audience and or split of the audience was too. So because they've both done fives and on different nights, Maybe so. I don't know. But we'll never know. Who was writing TV in early 96? I know you said you weren't involved in that. That was Sahadi and those guys. But is Cornette involved? Is JR involved? No. Sahadi did those vignettes. Sahadi never wrote TV. Right. No. He was a segment producer. He did some vignettes, and he did the packages and sponsorship stuff. I'm just curious as you guys are being creative around the table and as you look at a format. Probably me and Cornette at this point. You and Cornette? Probably, yeah. Okay. Was Vince looking forward to his first response from TBS Legal? I mean, he had to assume after he does a billionaire Ted skit, he's going to get some sort of legal nasty gram from Turner Corporate in Atlanta. Don't you imagine he anticipated that? Sure. But I'm pretty sure that, you know, again, we didn't make sure to call him Billionaire Ted, made sure to call him the Nacho Man and the Huckster, never refer to them as what they referred to on WCW. So it was legally, I think, that those were vetted to make sure that there was nothing that directly went to their, IPs or anything like that. Let's talk about some of the other recognizable names in the skits. I know you said you weren't necessarily involved in these, but Vince Russo appears early on. Bob Collins from the live events department ends up playing a game show host. Are there any other names of folks that you may want to shout out and say, oh, yeah, I remember so-and-so was this character or what have you? No, but I was corrected last night from something that we did on the show of my return, that it was Steve Rubin who met me in the parking lot. I said I didn't know who it was. It was Steve Rubin. So thank you Steve for meeting me in the parking lot and by God bringing me in there in Houston at the Elimination Chamber That was a fun text last night like Steve but now you fucking you asked me a question now I forgot the goddamn answer who appeared in this shit I went there like Russo was in one and Bob Collins from Live Events was in one can you tell us anybody else looking at him I might be able to pick people out but it was whoever was literally it was whoever was available it was oh hey what are you doing right now Okay, go sit in here and do this. So I... Like, do you know who played the Huckster and the Nacho Man? The Huckster was... May have been an audio tech, and the Nacho Man was a tape-off. I don't know why that's fun, but it is. Let's talk a little bit about Scheme Gene. the second billionaire Ted's yet is going to have J.R. introduce Scheme Gene and he's going to do 900 number plugs and just go over the top with it like superstars are coming out of the woodwork on this one I can't give it to you now but I can give it to you later and later he says hold on Jim I got a huge name for the Royal Rumble as my mother-in-law used to say it's too hot for television I'll give it up if you give me a call on the hotline J.R. as the host of Monday Night Raw presses him and says, come on, one time, right here on TV, one time. Scheme Gene says, okay, it's Vader time. And McMahon concludes, well, that's typical Scheme Gene. Now, this is when WCW had just launched their 900 line with Mean Gene as sort of the anchor. And I think the entire industry knew that Gene was making a lot of money on that hotline. He had negotiated quite a good deal for himself. I think it's interesting that Vince took aim at Mean Gene. Did you ever have a conversation with the real-life Gene Okerlund about skiing Gene? Was he flattered? What did he think of it? I've never talked to him about it. I have no idea. What do you think he got lumped in here with Hogan? Well, I think that he was part of that group that went over. He was recognizable with WWF, and he was one of those guys that made the jump. so i think that you know i think more people when you ask them hey what gene oakland is the wwf guy then oh he was the wcw guy i think more people would recognize him from wwf all right guys blue tube's been a long time sponsor here on the show but have you heard what they're doing now they've got blue tube gold it's the newest innovation from the number one chewable ed brand what it does is it's a four in one beast that sets the gold standard for performance you see blue chew takes two ingredients for blood flow to keep that rocket pumping mixed with epimorphine and oxytocin to turn up the arousal and connection in your brain and body this isn't just a chewable by the way you see blue chew gold actually dissolves under your tongue and it gets worked in fast we're talking in as little as just 15 minutes so you can get it on faster and stay in the game longer forget netflix and chill this is more like netflix and phil make your life easier by getting harder and discover your options at bluechew.com and check this out you get 10 off your first month of blue chute gold when you use our promo code wrestle that's it the promo code is wrestle visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information and we thank blue chute for sponsoring today's podcast and bruce's wiener part two of the billionaire ted's war room we've got ted turner sitting at the head of the table little placard that says Ted Turner and it says, all right, boys, we need a new slogan for our television. It doesn't say Ted Turner, it doesn't say Billionaire Ted. Oh, you're right. I never said Ted Turner. How about uncooked, uncut, uncensored? Ah, we already stole that one. Others would chime in. How about ripping off unbelievable? You know, like not believable? Like Ted's wrestling is not believable. And Turner said, guys, this is no time to start telling the truth. someone else says this is where the good old boys play or maybe just the old boys play and then the huckster steps in and says who you call an old brother earner says what did i tell you guys this is no time to start telling the truth the nacho man says let's lie how about this is where the big boys play and turner says that's just dishonest enough to work and savage says what if all our stars have to take legitimate tests for steroids. And Hulk says, you don't have to worry about that because we're not in the WWF anymore. The narration is the new WWF generation. There's nothing old or unofficial here. So now he's really doubling down on the steroids thing. Was this about Vince trying to create problems for WCW with their lack of transparency on steroid tests? Or did he just feel like, hey, I've been held to an unfair standard. these guys should have to play by the same rules and he's shining a light on that or what is the motivation here with this? I think a lot of things you know coming at it from we were held to a different standard and it was people would look at us and say hey again because of the steroid trial but it was okay so WWE is the only one that needs to do steroid testing, which we didn't really need to do, but we did because it was the right thing to do. And they didn't get painted with any of those brushes. And a lot of people would argue that, hey, it was Hulk that kind of stirred it up. You know, again, I go back to the Arsenio Hall thing, and there's a pivotal moment where if he had just said, yeah, man, I took the stairways that were legal at the time, and I don't take them anymore, and I would recommend that you not take them. I think it would have all been done. But they didn't do that. And again, we were held to a different standard, and I think that just went up. That was in Vince's Crawl, that we were viewed with a different lens, and they were not. They didn't have to do any of that stuff. They didn't do drug testing and just and a lot of ours was self-imposed too, you know, so it was I think just you know, you're fighting and fighting and it's not necessarily a fair fight, but you're choosing to try to fight fair, but then you're doing this stuff. And you know, as you read that, I'm chuckling at shit because I guess now looking at it through 2026 lens is funny. I just didn't think it was funny at the time. I thought, man, we're opening up a can of worms that we don't want to open, and we're just giving them publicity. Every time we did it, I felt we were giving them unnecessary publicity. As a reminder, this is the era where the New York papers, boy, they had a hard-on for Vince back then, and they were after him. There are even allegations of witness tampering and all kinds of other stuff that never actually was proven. But Vince probably feels a certain type of way about that. So that's the subject of the second skit, steroids. And immediately after the show, on Monday Night Raw, Vince puts out a statement that says, The World Wrestling Federation is concerned about the health and well-being of its talent. Although on tonight's Raw program, we use satire to demonstrate a point about the WWF steroids policy, as opposed to Ted Turner's WCW, we realized that the use of steroids and other drugs of abuse is a serious issue and can pose health risks. Therefore, in a personal letter to Ted last week, I challenged him in the interest of the health and well-being of his athletes under his umbrella, as well as mine, to implement a policy which would adhere to the same strict standards which the WWF adopted several years ago. Also indicated that perhaps the only way this would occur is if we jointly select an independent drug policy advisor, collection agency and testing facility. The WWF has taken the lead in developing a program with teeth in it. Hopefully, Ted Turner will see the value in protecting his athletes as well. Of course, this is fun. You know, obviously, this never happens. Eric Bischoff would post a statement in responding to this, saying that WCW is not so inclined to participate in this. I do think it's an interesting strategy. Do you think that Vince felt like he was battling on two fronts? He are in the New York media market who were clearly on a witch hunt at times for him. And that's been proven. But also battling for his business. I mean, he's got some of his top stars over here and now they're going head to head with his A show. He's maybe is he trying to serve two masters here with this? Do you think? I mean, probably so. But also, look, there is the part of when you get into drugs and seeing, you know, a lot of young deaths and things of that nature that you get concerned and you go, God, you know, it would be nice because you hear the rumor and innuendo of, boy, they're running rampant there. And one of the things for talent was I can go to WCW. I can take all the steroids I want. I can smoke all the pot I want. I can snort all the cocaine I want. I can do all the new bane I want. I can do anything I want to do. And they don't care. That was prevalent from a talent perspective of saying, I don't want all your rules. I can go over there and they don't care as long as I show up and I'm able to step into the ring. and that was kind of what pissed Vince off was they really didn't care they just wanted to get people there and there were there's a lot of rumor and innuendo and that was also the lot that was when you're sitting there talking to people about hey why don't you say yeah but I can go there and do everything I want to do they don't care they'll let me do whatever I want to do and they don't care. They're not going to drug test me and fine me if I do it. That was real. And that was one of those where, you know, you have to help someone help themselves. So that was the reasoning behind that. Dijof would be on TV doing commentary for Nitro, and he would talk about how WCW really cares about their fans. That's why they give them the best matches for free. He's talking about promoting the Clash of Champions there. He refers to the Royal Rumble as the Royal Fumble. And he says the WWE is now Titanic Sports. And he points out that over the weekend, they were charging $10 for Polaroids with their world champion. So clearly, they're having some fun poking the bear back and forth. But the volume gets turned up. I don't think they were doing meat and grease just yet. I'm sure eventually they did some of that stuff. WCW is going to open the newspapers in the New York market later in January. And there's going to be a, I guess it's called a hot copy gossip column from the New York Daily News. This was on January 15th. And it's written, Ted Turner is getting ready to get in the ring with the World Wrestling Federation hot show Vince McMahon, says sources. We hear Turner, the owner of the rival World Championship Wrestling CNN on the Atlanta Braves, wants to scout McMahon because the WWF has parried him in sketches using a tall, thin mustache man with a silly-sounding Southern drawl named Billionaire Ted. And Turner says he's not even mad. Rather, says sources, he was angered because he was portrayed as a hillbilly with a bad suit. And Ted's a little sensitive, says the source. Billionaire Ted doesn't like Billionaire Ted and wants the feud to end. Now, WCW would say they never issued any sort of official comment. That's all nonsense. And a lot of people who've played online detective feel like this may have been a planted story, that the WWF planted this story in the New York Daily News, which I think is hilarious. I think there's a chance that that was the way this went down. Yeah, because we had such great relationships with those two newspapers. Right. That they would do that. Sure. Right. Ask anybody who knows Ted. Yes, Ted even talks about in his documentaries about hating to be portrayed as a hillbilly. Even though at some points he says he is a hillbilly. And it's like, come on, man, it's a parody. And you're, that's how a lot of people view you, Ted. You're a brilliant dumb bitch and a genius, but I'm just saying that with all that comes all the other negative. You know, recently I was riding with my friend Eric Bischoff through his old neighborhood in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. And I couldn't help but reminisce about my first house and when I was first getting going in business and starting a new career. And I got to hear Eric's story, and he was just beaming with pride about how far he's come. And I was kind of motivated by that. So when I went back to my hometown, I rode through and checked out my old house. And it's just interesting to see, you know, where you were in life and where you are now. And it makes me grateful. I know that's the name of Eric's book, but it really did make me grateful too. 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That's like a little over $20 a month. head on over right now to policygenius.com slash wrestle to compare life insurance quotes from the top companies and see how much you could save that's policygenius.com slash wrestle the thing that tickles me the most is hey at least put him in a good suit that's a bad suit i would wear better suits than that the idea that that is a thing he took issue with makes me laugh were they bad suits? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure by Vince McMahon and Ted Turner standards, they were bad suits. I doubt, I doubt Ted Turner wore anything for men's warehouse. I can be wrong. I don't think that anybody said, Hey, let's get a really bad suit for Ted, but whatever. Bischoff has going to do, going to do an interview with Alex Marvez of the daily news. And he says, I'm a little surprised. they responded talking about the WWF because people who worked for Vince in the past say he always espoused the theory of never acknowledging the competition but in a different way I'm not surprised desperate people do desperate things and he says on a 900 line interview on the WCW hotline the WWF has fear, desperation and confusion written all over their faces and he said McMahon used to sit on a pedestal and not acknowledge the competition but now he's resorted to the billionaire Ted skits. I know you said that you weren't in favor of this and you said that you and Cornette were helping with TV. What do you think Corny thought of these billionaire Ted skits? I don't think anybody was crazy about them. Except for Vince and Saadi and those guys. I don't know. I don't think you liked them. I think for the same reasons. You're acknowledging your competition and that's a no-no. That's kind of rule number one. Don't do that. And, again, like I said, other events and Sahadi who was, like, excited about doing them, I think that, at least in the beginning, that, because everybody bailed at the end, by God, it was, yeah, not favorable. On the hotline appearance, Bischoff defends WCW and their drug testing policy. He says that WCW has successfully screened employees who've had problems with steroids in the past, and he even says a number of wrestlers who had trouble passing WCW's tests now work in the WWF. Eric says, look at where they're coming from. This is a guy who spent the better part of three years battling a steroid controversy. Consider the source. I don't know. It feels like he maybe could have done a better job defending that here. But as they talk about gold dust, this is something that we haven't touched on yet. Bischoff says that WCW has introduced more new talent to the national scene in the last three months than Vince has in the last three years. He strongly rips the Goldust character and said he feels sorry for Dustin Rhodes. Quote, if that's the epitome of your creative genius, I feel bad for you. Now, Eric isn't exactly wrong. WCW was showcasing younger talent on Nitro like Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and Dean Malenko. And I think history has proven out. Boy, the Goldust character, that was a hit. Maybe it was ahead of his time. but it was a hit. Absolutely. And I don't think they may have brought in new people and stuff. And the reasoning, even if you ask Eric, he wanted car crashes. He didn't give a shit who was in there as long as they gave him car crashes. If you're flipping the channels and you see a bunch of guys in there flying all over the place and beating the hell out of each other and doing something different that was different than everything else on the car, It's going to catch your attention for a minute. I'm going to watch this for a second, but I don't think, with the exception of NWO, name, you know, really what they do for Eddie Guerrero. What did they character develop for Chris Van Waugh for a lot of those guys, other than the NWO guys in Sting? Don't know they did a lot of character development or created any new stars. Right. Well, Bischoff is going to say that the Monday Night Wars haven't caused the 40% decrease in pay-per-view revenue that the company has brought in. He's going to criticize In Your House and say it's a two-hour TV show that fans have to pay for. And he would go on to say Vince can't win the battle. And it's not because we have an empire behind us. It's because we have people here committed to the product. He's living off of the fat of success created for him by people like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage years ago. And I do think, you know, who are they living off of now at this point? Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage. Yes, they are. But, I mean, he is fair in the criticism of In Your House. We know you guys would eventually change that. But I do want to ask about the TV convention. This is something we've touched on a little bit before. What's NAFTI stand for? National Association of Programming Television Executives. There you go. that's built around in Las Vegas January 23rd to January 25th WWE is going to WCW rather is going to do a clash of the champions in Vegas so they can have a lot of their guys on hand the WWF wants to compete they've got a very impressive booth they're showing lots of great Shawn Michaels stuff but they're also showing some billionaire Ted skits which I wonder was that out of place or because it's for ad executives do we think hey a parody of Ted Turner at a television convention is going to get TV executives or ad agencies to at least stop and have a chuckle at that, who may not normally stop and look at a wrestling booth. What do you think the strategy was there? Maybe. I mean, obviously, your strategy is to get television deals. Right. So anything that's going to get somebody to stop for a minute so you can talk to them and say, hey, who are you with? Hey, you're like, where are you? All right, well, we'd like to be on your television station. What kind of deal can you make us? so in this was also a time where strategy had changed from you go back to the early mid late 80s and having to pay to be on stations in some markets to now you're going to those same markets and saying yeah I understand at one point we paid you guys several thousand dollars a week beyond the air now you're going to pay us several thousand dollars a week beyond the air and we're going to keep our ad time and we're going to do this. So the landscape had changed quite a bit. But anything to get people to stop in and talk to. The billionaire Ted skit, the next one, is going to be Ted begging for an original idea rather than stealing one from the WWF. No one can come up with one until Scheme Gene says he's got one, but you'll have to call the hotline to hear it. And everyone pulls out a cell phone and calls. And they're going to tease that the next week they're going to do the final War Room skit, which will be a press conference where we finally hear from Ted why he wants to put the WWF out of business. Now, before that happens, the ratings for that episode of Monday Night Raw come out. That's where WCW has their biggest victory to date. It's a 3.5 to a 2.4. The WCW show had a 5.0 share. Monday Night Raw had a 3.5 share. when the rating comes out, the largest margin by either side so far, Eric picks up the phone and calls Vince McMahon. Vince doesn't take the call, so Eric leaves a message with the secretary that basically says, hey, keep doing whatever you're doing with the billionaire Ted Skits. I've never asked you about this. How did Vince receive that? I have no idea. Never heard that from him. if nothing else is this the pettiest shit in the history of the Monday Night Wars it feels like it it was kind of petty on all fronts yes so you know yeah but petty gets what petty wants or petty wants you know what I mean petty gets petty let's talk about Wrestlemania I can't believe this is real but somewhere in here it's announced that the Huckster is going to wrestle the Nacho Man. They're going to have Billionaire Ted as a special guest referee, and it's going to be on WrestleMania. Now, of course, we know it winds up airing on the pre-show. But when you first heard that, you had to be like, do what? What are we doing? Talk me through this. Quite possibly one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. And this is also where all the geniuses of the Billionaire Ted skits bailed out. Sahadi couldn't be found for miles anywhere near this didn't want to touch it nobody did Vince didn't even want to touch it promoted the god damn thing put it out there nobody wanted to touch it and it was Bruce need you to make this thing happen and this gave me an overview here's what I want why don't we just cancel it Why don't we just say, uh, Bigger, Ted, Huckster, Nacho are all dead and not going to happen. Something, anything, just don't do this, please. God, don't do it. And, uh, what's that? Let's pause the WrestleMania talk. Cause that's how we'll end the show. I want to get there. Cause that is sort of the blow off. But before we get there, uh, first of all, I love the idea that it was at least teased. You're going to see these guys wrestle at WrestleMania, but just for, uh, context. This 1996 WrestleMania, this is also the year where it was at least suggested what if we tried to book OJ? Now, ultimately, that didn't happen, but we did get the OJ Broncos. That was the idea that was a pitch, yeah. Absolutely. It's a crazy year for WWF. But we didn't do that either because of poor taste. Right. We did the Bronco chase, but yeah, we didn't book OJ. I can't help it. That was the only car that was available. Oh, my God. Will you stop? What? We had a helicopter chase to do the whole thing, so. Sure. Yeah. Doc Hendricks, who we sometimes affectionately refer to as a nickname here on the show based on the sound he makes, which, Bruce, that is. Nakes? Really? That's what we're going with. Yeah. We used to have fun on this show. So, Doc Hendricks is going to acknowledge that a Turner executive called the WWF to express his delight in broadcasting these skits. And he said that same official sent a letter threatening legal action against the WWF. Doc said this on TV. We here in the World Wrestling Federation stand ready to fight for our rights, our company, and our fans. And besides, you asked for it. You've got it. And he introduced another skit. This is the press conference with Billionaire Ted, Huckster, and Nacho Man. And there's also a transcript of Fischoff's letter that's actually shown on Monday Night Raw. It was dated January 23rd. And Eric wrote, Dear Mr. McMahon, your letter dated January 3rd, 1996 to Mr. Ted Turner and your subsequent letter on January 10th have been directed to my attention. Although initially mildly amusing, the WBF programming that you refer to as satirical vignettes has become defamatory in disparaging the WCW and its wrestlers. Accordingly, we've referred this to our legal counsel for review and response. In addition, Mr. Devitt's letter on January 11th on your behalf to Mr. Lambrose of this office has similarly been referred to legal counsel for review and response. A copy of this letter, we're informing Mr. McDevitt of this referral and advising him that we found his previous letters wholly without merit and undeserving of response. In light of WCW and WWF program ratings, we understand your concern about the content of our programs. Your encouragement is duly noted. However, WCW programming decisions are the responsibility of WCW and Turner Broadcasting. Finally, as you were aware, WCW has a comprehensive substance abuse policy, which does include drug testing. While we appreciate your interest in combining the efforts of the WWF with certain facets of our program, we are not so inclined. signed Eric Bischoff, Senior Vice President. And I think that's kind of fun because the WWF actually makes copies of their responses to Bischoff's letter available to both the Torch and the Observer. And it's really rare that we saw Vince reaching out to industry trades like this. What do you think prompted him to do that? Was he trying to, you know, fight for the wrestling fans, the hardcores? hardcores or why would he send this to the torch and the observer do you think well i think again just to take the narrative that was out there and correct it in some regard and say well no here's actually what what happened versus hearsay and innuendo and and rumor and shit so again you know me i'm not a fan of that either because they have no credibility um the dirt sheets have zero credibility. So when you give them something, and I'm shocked that they actually used and printed that as such, because that's not their MO. Usually they would just make up something and print whatever the hell they want. So, again, not a good time as far as reasons for making business decisions during this point in time. all right listen up folks a lot of us in january we start to say man i want to eat a little better in the new year and then by this point we realize hey that's harder than i thought it doesn't have to be not with factor if you have zero time and zero energy to make it happen factor doesn't ask you to meal prep or follow goofy recipes it just removes the entire problem two minutes real food done that's it if you're not failing at eating healthy you're failing at having three extra hours every night factor is already made by chefs designed by dieticians and delivered to your front door you just heat it and eat it two minutes and you're good to go that's all it takes now what can you count on with factor lean proteins colorful vegetables whole food ingredients healthy fats the stuff you'd make if you only had time by the way there's no refined sugars no artificial sweeteners no refined seed oils i'm a big believer in factor they've been a staple in the thompson household for a long time my wife you know she's been meal prepping and doing her thing to get ready for competitions and then she discovered hey it's a lot easier with factor you've got a hundred different rotating meals every week you've got high protein calorie smart Mediterranean GLP one support ready to eat salads they've even got a new muscle pro collection for strength and recovery there's something for everybody you just pick what fits your goals but it's healthier eating it's calorie management it's more protein whatever you're actually trying to do by the way what you'll love about factor is it's always fresh it's never frozen it's ready in two minutes no prep no cleanup no mental load not motivation to eat better elimination of the reason that you don't head on over right now to factor meals.com slash wrestle 50 off and use our promo code wrestle 50 off you'll get 50 off your first factor box plus free breakfast for a year only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. Factormeals.com slash Wrestle50 off. Now, what's interesting is McDivitt writes a letter that he then shares with the Observer in the Torch where he's responding even to Bischoff's letter. My favorite piece of this is where he says, Finally, with respect to your false indication that Mr. McMahon is aware, quote-unquote, that WCW has a comprehensive substance abuse policy which included drug testing, end quote. My clients are not aware that WCW has any such drug testing program. WCW has never released its supposed policy to any member of the media as the WWF has done. Thus, no release policy of WCW indicates that steroids are included in any drug testing, and your letter rather obviously does not indicate that any tests include steroids. Then he includes a quote from The Observer that says, quote, the drug of choice in WCW's human growth hormone and a German version of Anivar. I just think this is so wild to see McDivitt quoting the Observer in a legal letter to Turner. It's like, wait a minute, what? This feels like we're in a bizarro world here. It is. Because, again, you're, you know, my thing to that is he's taking the rumor and the bullshit from the Observer. and again it's yeah this is a bizarro time it is I mean literally it is flipping it on its head man or in a stranger stranger things it's like the upside down world here's the big thing that I think maybe Vince was looking for all along and he kept it in his back pocket maybe it was a pivot I'm not sure I want to ask you but this letter that McDivitt is going to send in response to Bischoff's letter says, I'm authorized to tell you that we will be advising the Federal Trade Commission of the actions of Turner's organizations and those direct tactics since the facts, which have come to light in the specific context of this matter, indicate that the media power of the Turner Empire is being concisely used, or consciously used rather, to drive a competitor out of business and thereby injure consumers. so as a reminder there's rumor and innuendo that there's going to be a merger and if and when this happens maybe this is when we want to sort of upset the apple cart do you think Vince was intent on trying to create legal issues for Ted Turner with the FTC here on this merger I have no idea you know it's probably so just I think from a defensive standpoint but who knows who knows but yes you know when you any anything they're gonna FTC when you're looking at those things looks at everything so if that's one little nugget to go in and say here's the reason this merger shouldn't happen who knows as a reminder the um here's here's what the observer says the object appears to make a huge effort to bring out publicly both the millions of in losses suffered by WCW since its purchase by TBS in 1988, and behind the scenes complained to the FTC about alleged predatory business practices about WCW and the TBS organization and competition, thrown in drug allegations to muddy the water as well. The idea is to appear to be, publicly as possible, paint a negative picture of both the financial position of WCW, its business practices, and bringing up a possible drug problem to somehow cause the tiny organization in the Turner Empire to be reexamined by Time Warner before the merger that is expected to take place later this year. Now, of course, this is interesting because this is around the same time that Vince actually puts out or tries to put out an ad in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Now, some of our listeners have probably seen a copy of this, And I think what they saw is the published version. There was another version that was not approved. And it said, attention, stockholders. Has Ted Turner lost $40 million of your money in his personal vendetta against the World Wrestling Federation? Where are those losses reported in TBS financial statements? Now, both papers turned down the ad, but a modified version is accepted by the Times and ran. And we've got that one here. So this is probably the version That everyone has seen You can see it right now at somethingtowrestle.com Attention TBS stockholders Does Ted Turner have a Personal vendetta against the World Wrestling Federation Time Warner beware Boy this is Is this the most quote unquote Gotten to we've ever seen Vince I mean from day one of this program Something to Wrestle You said that like a Vince mantra is Never let us see sweat No No sell everything He selling This is weird He fighting Yes He fighting is what he doing And it's, I just don't think that at that point, at this point in time, to, you know, every merger that there is. like right now with Time Warner or TBS or not, you know who I'm talking about, Warner Brothers. Yes. Right now with the merger that they're going through, everybody's going to put out everything that they possibly can to stop them. And I'm sure Vince was a shareholder, you know, and that stuff as well. So the argument could be said, yeah, man, he does have a stake in it. but I just didn't think it was a good look. I just really didn't feel it was good luck at all. The press conference skit is one that ruffled a lot of feathers. I want to talk about that one because we've addressed the steroid issue in the past, and now during this press conference, the billionaire Ted character is going to field questions from reporters, and reporters are asking things like, hey why do you have twice as many wrestling television shows as the WWF but you undercut them on ad rates hey why did you put your show head to head with the WWF are you trying to put the WWF out of business and you don't care about wrestling fans that's sort of the narrative that's being pushed here and they even have the Huxley character say something like it's in my contract with billionaire Ted that I never lose Dave Meltzer would write which I believe is the case and the WWF knows it. Titan had a copy of Hogan's WCW contract to use, if need be, for cross-examination in the trial in 1994, since the WWF was given the option by his agreement with them to have a right to match WCW's contract terms. So, of course, Hogan says he would have stayed with the WWF, but the terms were so huge financially to Hogan that McMahon declined to match the figure. That's something you and I have never talked about before. Do you believe that's accurate that Hogan's initial WCW contract said, I won't lose? Meltzer bought it. Is that real? I have no idea. I know I had creative control. Right. So technically, yes, that was Hogan's call. So, yeah, Hogan did have final say on all of his creative. That part I knew, and that part I did read in Hogan's contract. so I'm trying to remember if I saw Hulk's contract at that time I know I saw it later on during the NWO when Hulk wanted to leave and come back he was just looking for more money I think from us but I know at that time I saw it and I saw what he signed so I did see his deal and I saw their offer so he had creative control I don't know that it necessarily said I can't lose but he has creative control if he says he can't then he can't it's not saying I won't lose what do you think about airing that on a WWF show though I mean I know that at this point everybody knows what wrestling is and I know that we're finally going to get a pay per view in New Jersey for SummerSlam 97. But here we are in February of 96, and we're still trying to argue to beat the tax issue with the Athletic Commission in New Jersey. That is going to be a fabulous pay-per-view in 97 for SummerSlam. But you're kind of on TV here saying, if I'm a contract, I don't lose. I hate it. Yeah, that's just weird. Yeah. But, again, you know, even like beating the tax issue, They're the ones that beat the shit out of everybody for just collecting a tax and doing absolutely nothing to warrant that tax. It was just something that was created for boxing. They loved wrestling in there, and nothing in the wrestling business was the same as the boxing business. It was, you know, we're entertainment. It's work. There are predetermined outcomes, the whole nine yards. So, and I go back to Roy Shires and Vern Gagne, petitioning the state athletic commissions in the days. There were some, look, man, there were some guys, Paul Bosch, loved paying the state, he didn't love paying them, but loved saying, hey, we're overseeing by the state athletic commission. By God, we're legit. We're never legit. Come on, stop. but to me you know I look at a guy like Roy Shire and Vern Gagne who went and went before the board and said man this is all predetermined this isn't real you're trying to govern us like you govern boxing we're not it's different and so that part is to me always been fascinating because there's no there's no correlation. And they just, look, if you want to tax, you want to tax the entertainment, then tax the concerts, tax the football games, tax the baseball games, put an entertainment tax on there. That's what you got to do. Get your 5% or whatever. But don't come at us with a bunch of rules that are never going to be followed by you or anybody else. And it just was it was just stupid to me it's just the idea of it airing on a WWF program tonight raw saying oh yeah it's in my contract I don't lose it's like man what are we doing we've lost the plot here the thing I think stuck out to a lot of people is the way this skit ended the nervous Ted Billionaire Ted character says Jane where's my lithium and I don't know I found that interesting like that feels like a personal shot. Lithium, of course, was primarily used as like a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder and treating mania and I guess reducing suicide risk. But the idea that we're going to Which Jane and Ted both acknowledged previously. That wasn't like a secret. That was something that had been acknowledged. Again, I don't like going there. Right. oh man this was ugly is this one of the uglier with the benefit of hindsight is this top 10 worst ideas in WWE it's up there the strange happenings continue in February there's a tag match happening on Nitro the Lakeland Civic Center and all of a sudden the power goes out. And when that happens, Eric Bischoff comes back on air and says, I wonder how that happened. Desperate people do desperate things. I like the competition. I love a good fight. If the fight isn't good, I don't like being in it. And I guess supposedly Vince was majorly pissed off that Eric is implying that he had something to do with a power failure. Of course, the WVF was not involved in that at all. There was some sort of an issue at the neighboring exhibit hall that caused the Civic Center to lose power. Do you remember Nitro losing power and Vince being pissed about what Bischoff said, or is this just something that he communicated to the man? I vaguely remember it, but it was so silly. That's, like, not even worth even commenting on. Right. In February, Vince sends a letter to Ted to talk about blading, of all things. And the letter reads, Dear Ted, since there's been no response to my repeated requests that you and your pro wrestling company stopped the practice of self-mutilation. I can only assume, based on the last two weeks of Nitro, that the practice of self-mutilation, parentheses, slicing oneself with a razor blade, is not only condoned but encouraged. As you know, Hulk Hogan has been bleeding all over the place the past two weeks. There have been numerous references on your wrestling programming that this weekend's double cage match will be so violent that one opponent will be bleeding to the point of no recognition. This encouraged practice of self-mutilation is disgusting, violent, and potentially infectious and completely contradictory in every way to your testimony before Congress in June of 93 and contrary to your 95 participation in Voices Against Violence. Notwithstanding numerous unprecedented predatory practices against the World Wrestling Federation, if you continue to promote self-mutilation, I hope your shareholders hold you accountable for this unethically, guttural, potentially unhealthy practice. now obviously he's battling here but we haven't ever really talked about this was Vince just completely opposed the entire time you've known him to blading no not completely opposed to it I think as you get older and also your business grows and you start to get advertiser feedback that there are advertisers hey you're gonna be bleeding all over the place I don't want to be a part of your program Right. So they're there. It limits you. So that alone from a business perspective, but also the health risks and everything else involved in it doesn't mean that we we didn't do it and continue to do it. And it just, when you think about it, you look at it, I think trying to explain that to a network executive or an advertising executive, that's a difficult thing to do. And it's not logical. And it's something that is hard for them to understand and or want to be a part of. so if it was uniform across again, hard ways are going to be hard ways and that's going to happen. It ain't ballet, but that was kind of the message. And that was the road went down and then went down a different road and, and been down all of them along the way. So it's just, um, you know, try, trying to, to clean it up a little bit. Right. And, um, And again, I go back to you're sitting there and you're watching a show and somebody's bleeding. They take a close-up of the blood and then you go to commercial and there's little kids playing, you know, with your action figures and all this stuff. And it just doesn't feel good. It just doesn't feel good. And that's hard to sell because you got a guy, a toy manufacturer now going, what the hell? you know I gotta get you know toys with real bleeding action then you can sell blood packets and stuff put it in the toy and push a button they can bleed yeah it's just or pizza cutters old fashioned it's old fashioned R-E-S-S-L-I-N that's right alright folks by now you know Bruce and I are absolutely in love with our dogs I mean Mrs. Fritchard has dedicated her life to dogs but she knows way more about dogs than I do, I'll admit. I thought Ginger scratching her ears and licking her paws was just like normal dog stuff, but it's not. It's actually a sign of allergies. And allergies in our dogs flare up when bad bacteria takes over their gut. You see, just like humans, dogs need probiotics or good bacteria to strengthen their gut health and calm down their overactive immune system. That's why my wife and I started using Better Wild Allergy Relief Soft Chews for our dogs. This is a supplement designed to support your pet's allergy defense system by strengthening their digestion. These are the first and only chews but the Ancestral Advantage Wolf Probiotics derived from your dog's mighty ancestor, the wolf. This is going to restore a healthy balance of good bacteria in the gut. All of the Better Wild Allergy Supplement Chews include four key ingredients. A premium blend of the wolf probiotics. You also get L-sacchii, and that has been clinically proven to reduce itchiness and redness in just two months with daily use. You get some colostrum to go ahead and boost their immune function and fight off some inflammation. And how about the salmon oil to better support their healthy skin and fur? My dogs have noticed the difference. Yours will, too. I didn't realize that my dogs were suffering, but it's not like they can communicate. But if you see your dog scratching their ears or licking their paws, they're telling you, Dad, Mom, get me some Better Wild. Better Wild is committed to helping your dogs with science-backed, veterinary-approved solutions that you can actually feel great about. And right now, Better Wild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at BetterWild.com slash wrestle. That's BetterWild.com slash wrestle for up to 40% off your order. BetterWild.com slash wrestle. Wade is going to have a pretty in-depth conversation with Vince here in February. It winds up taking like 20 pages of the torch. But at one point, Wade did try to hold Vince accountable on the double standard of blading. And Vince sets the record straight. He says, I'm very concerned with blading, and I'm vehemently against that. You have quotes from WCW people on the air saying that there will be bleeding beyond recognition. I object to that. That policy started when Hulk Hogan was around. Hogan would slap me on occasion because he loved to blade. I told him it doesn't mean anything anymore. It's dangerous and nasty, but he would disobey me. That's kind of old school wrestling, though, right? I mean, if it was up to Ric Flair, he would have bled in every match. He thinks it really adds a lot to it. But it doesn't. When you do it all the time, it doesn't. You become desensitized to it, and it means less than nothing and becomes disgusting. You do it every once in a while, and only one does it, then that's, okay, I can see if you use it effectively. yes, but when everybody's doing it, there was, I'll never forget, man, there was a period in Mid-South, right, 86, where it felt like between the Sheep Herders and the Fantastics and Diviase and Doc and the Freebirds, it felt like every single match had blood. So much so that they were writing about it in the papers. where one of the columnists in Houston wrote, Ted DiBiase is slicing his head in the ring before the national anthem is even finished. The amount of blood, but that's what, you know, Bill, this was down. By God, you've got to give him more violence. It didn't mean anything because they were getting it in the second, first or second matches. So by the time you get to the main event, you've seen it in five other matches. Oh, okay. It's like an arm drag. Yeah, I saw one earlier. Yeah, the topic of unfair competition. You know, when we talked about this towards the top of the show, Vince is going to make his case that Ted Turner is playing unfairly. And Dave Meltzer would point out that the promotional wars way back when, between the promotions and the territory days, was much worse than this, what's happening now, as far as getting the police involved and fake allegations and trying to set people up and yada, yada, yada. But there's a narrative out there, and you and I have never talked about this, that Vince eventually would express regret that he put most of his competitors out of business because maybe in hindsight, he didn't realize this at the time, it cost him a training ground for future stars. Do you remember him having like an about face? I mean, we know he was piss and vinegar and taking over the world. But one day did he say, damn, that was kind of helpful. I wish we should. Again, the narrative is false because Vince wanted to work with everybody. He wanted to be in charge, but he wanted to have everybody continue with their territories, but be a part of it. and that would have provided the training ground and when those that he approached said no fuck you we're going to squash you, you come in here we'll kill you I was like okay I'm coming, I'd rather be with you than have to fight you that's what it became and it's just I know everybody will disagree with that But look, I was there on on the other side of it and listen to people say, no, we're going to we're going to just squash him. We're going to go to New York and put him out of business. Right. That was never this is intent wasn't to put other people out of business. He wanted to be a part of their business, wanted to come in and say, hey, look, and I'm going to have this national TV that feeds into everybody and do it that way. and then it became what it became due to the responses that he got. And he was like, okay, well, then I'll just go in and fucking take it. Yes, and then he went in and took it. So there were a few guys. It was Mike LaBelle. There was Stu Hart. You know, the guys in Georgia that eventually, man, they took the money and they said, yeah, no, we'll sell you our territory. We'll do it. And they did it. They cashed out, they made their money and moved on. But the rest of them who dug in, by God, I'm going to go to New York. Bill Watts, I'm going to go to New York. I'm going to put him out of business up there. That's what I'm going to do. Well, Bill, maybe you need to start worrying about the fairgrounds in Tulsa first. Because we ain't drawing here. I don't know what makes you think we're going to draw up there. Vern well Vern can't fill Chicago anymore well I'm going to go to the Meadowlands I'm going to go to New York and that was the that's what it was and it's take care of your business and if your business ends up being better than someone else's business and the consumer chooses they like yours better they may like theirs better and then you lose or you win Vince files a complaint with the FTC Bureau of Competition on February 18th. He's trying to disrupt this merger of Ted Turner's, and he's going to tell the Torch on the Observer that it wasn't one single thing, but a combination of a lot of things. But the biggest thing that Dave Meltzer gives him credit for is the allegation that WCW is undercutting him on their ad sales. WCW officials are claiming that the ads for their entire network for a 30-second spot are $19,000, but the WWF is charging $15,000. McMahon, of course, lists that number as $25,000 for the WWF and $18,000 for WCW. And because WCW has more shows, the WWF is delivering a smaller audience. So technically, Vince is correct. He's charging more for a smaller audience. He had his pricing out first. WCW is trying to undercut it It's interesting that Vince is trying this Every way he can He's portraying This as if Ted Turner has A personal vendetta against him And I gotta ask, do you think That Ted had a personal vendetta against him? I think they both did I think they both did at this point, absolutely Of course there's lots of discussions about this Super Bowl of wrestling that was proposed. We know it goes nowhere. McMahon does an interview again with Wade Keller and he says the Nitro thing is crazy. It's one thing to go head to head but it's unprecedented for a network program to start a few minutes before the top of the hour and then a few minutes after. And not only have they scheduled Nitro head to head with us in every time zone but there's a second airing of Nitro so that it's seen it's unbelievable when you think about the cooperation. I mean it was really rare for Vince to pick up the phone and get on the horn with Dave Meltzer and Wade Keller like this. It's a teachable moment, maybe, for Vince and the WWF. Did they take their eye off the ball here a little bit in early 96? I think they moved their eye towards everybody else, and that's where we lost it. That's where we became vulnerable because we weren't taking care of our own business. and it's that simple. But it's, you know, again, talking about it being unfair, we couldn't go to USA and say we want to start five minutes early. Eventually we got them to give us an overrun. They loved the overrun because it helped the rating so much, but they weren't about to give us, let us start five minutes early, and they weren't going to give us a replay because of all of their other programming. By God, they had to get that episode of Silk Stockings in, the one where, you know, or get the run in her stockings, I guess. But, you know, that is the difference, and that is where you're not playing on an even playing field. But, again, the one thing that USA did give us and allowed it to happen was the overrun. And as years went on, those overruns became more and more and longer and longer. but you know as long as ours went they went longer because they could McMahon would say if WCW was competing on some equal basis great but Turner's competing unfairly I have to concentrate on making these points through humor I could sit down on TV in one sitting and explain the points we're trying to get across in all of the skits but everyone would change the channel so I have to do it through humor it's easy to include Hogan in that humor because WCW is feeding him everything I mean, Hogan knocks everyone silly and gets up from everything. It's ridiculous, and I would suggest one day the fans will be throwing up over it. So we're trying to entertain while at the same time telling a story. And, of course, he was correct. Eventually fans did turn on Hulk Hogan, and they had to turn him heel. But when he is having these interactions, he being Vince with Wade and Dave, they are trying to hold him accountable about saying, hey, isn't this what you did back in the day to the territory promoters? and Vince makes the point that you just made on his behalf earlier. But when he's asked about Hulk Hogan specifically, he says, in order to get Hogan to jump from the AWA, he had to offer him a minimum of $100,000 guaranteed for the first year. Quote, Hogan wanted assurances in case what we were doing didn't work. But otherwise, McMahon says, everyone else jumped because they believed in what he was doing. No one else received a guarantee. Now, you and I have never talked about this before, But I have heard a narrative out there that one of the ways that Vince was able to sell Hulk on making the move is he sold Hogan the dream of, hey, you're going to be the first million dollar wrestler. We're going to we're going to make you a million dollars. But that sounds like he's. Well, and he did. But it sounds like he's selling opportunity. Do you remember ever hearing that it was an actual hundred thousand dollar guarantee? Yeah, that is what it was. So that's the real first guarantee contract is Hogan jumping from AWA for a hundred grand. I don't know that it was even in the contract. It may have been. But I do know from talking to Vince and talking to Hulk, it was $100,000. Come over, I guarantee you're going to make at least $100,000 a year. And he made a lot more than that. But the sell was opportunity. Here you have the opportunity to make more than that. You're not going to do that there. And Byrne offered him nothing. Yeah, he didn't even want to pay him on the Hulkamania t-shirt. Yeah. The Billionaire Ted Skits in late February transitioned to the Larry King set and parodies, which I have to admit are kind of fun. But this is also the same time when WCW comes down and their legal department says, I guess there's like an official, unofficial gag order. Don't reference or acknowledge or infer anything about the WWE. Turner Legal is kind of done with all of this. But at some point in March, Eric Bischoff does one of those Prodigy chats with Bob Ryder, and he's asked about scheduling Nitro. He says, The decision to air Nitro on Monday night was made because it's a natural extension of our weekend lineup. It allows us to take advantage of the boost from pay-per-views because of the spillover audience. We aren't trying to put the WWF out of business, but we are trying to compete. It's like Burger King opening a restaurant on one corner and McDonald's opening up on the other corner. We're trying to be competitive. We want to expand our market share. If anything, we've expanded the entire market. Because of the lack of competition, the WWF had a virtual monopoly on the business and controlled 70% to 80% of the market. We're generating new fans and expanding the business. He's asked about the billionaire Ted Skits, and he says, Ted Turner has better things to do than worry about Skits on WWF programming. I turned on TV last night and saw him with President Clinton. And from WCW's standpoint, we see it as a desperate action by desperate people. I think that's interesting. At no point did Vince ever really address or take shots at Eric Bischoff. It was always about Ted, wasn't it? Yeah. Didn't care about Eric. I want to ask you, though, you know, Eric has been quoted for years at the height of the NWO. allegedly he said something like hey we're going to put him out of business and in this interview on Prodigy Eric says that WWF going out of business wouldn't be a good thing quote that would be a bad thing I don't want that to happen competition is good it's what drives people to succeed we all need competition to keep us at our best I believe a year from now we'll be in better shape than we are now we will continue to expand in many directions when I hang up with you I'm talking to TNT about some specials we might run later in the year They're really happy with us and have some opportunities to do other things with them. Now, that does feel a little contradictory to what we've heard, allegedly, Eric say in private, where I'm going to put them out of business. They said it on an interview. He said it on, like, an ET interview or something like that. Okay. I've seen the interview and I've heard him say it. Interesting. It's in the torch in mid-March that Hulk Hogan was supposedly upset at the billionaire Ted's get that portrayed the Huckster needing oxygen. Did you ever talk to Hulk Hogan? Do you know if he gave a shit about these skits? Never talked to him about it. Yeah. The week says we get closer to WrestleMania. The Huckster versus the Nacho Man gets moved off of the main show. It's now put on the pre-show. The skits are getting cut down. They're not as long. They're less stiff. It feels like you sort of laid this out earlier where you said, hey, at the end, everybody was kind of wanting to run away from this and say, not it. What happened? It ran its course. It was dead. It was dead. I wish we had just killed it. But, you know, it already made the announcement. It's like, okay, you've got to do something. Let's talk a little bit about a quote that Vince McMahon had with Chet Coppock on New Sport Talk. He's talking about Ted Turner's motivations with WCW, and he says, you only lose money for that amount of time for two reasons, either a personal vendetta or their standpoint of trying to eventually monopolize the business or a combination of those two. And he even says that he recently bumped into Ted Turner at a function. And Turner in person proposed to Vince a Super Bowl of wrestling. So this would have been early 96 or late 95. And he says McMahon told Turner he's not interested, but added jokingly, quote, the only thing I'd be interested in would be getting in the ring with you. Now, of course, we know that never happened. And did you ever hear the story of Vince and Ted bumping into each other and Ted suggesting, hey, let's do it. So now it's not coming through Jack Hitchcock or any of that. Yeah. I mean, Ted only had one play. That was his play. You know, that's what Ted wanted to do. That's how Ted viewed business. And, yes, I could definitely see Vince telling him, I'd like to wrestle you, pal. Well, at WrestleMania, the Nacho Man, Huckster, and Billionaire Ted and this skit all died within seconds. The irritate segment of a high school gym filled with nothing but senior citizens. They have an even older Huckster come to the ring. He's got a walker and he's going to expire. Nacho Man tries to climb the ropes. He falls off and he also expires. and they managed to quickly work in a women's shoe, chair, and handcuff gags. And then Billionaire Ted talks about how he didn't care that his two biggest stars had just died because he could just buy more stars that he can't create himself. And then a big guy in a black robe came in with FTC on his outfit. Ted turned around, saw him. He had a heart attack, and now he's left for dead. And Meltzer would say, this segment was awful, and with the exception of the fans in the $300 seats who cheered, It was mainly met by indifference and a large amount of booze. And the next day, the Monday after WrestleMania, we saw the debut of Mankind. Billionaire Ted's gets, we're no more. Is this high fives all around in the writing room when we're just done with this shit and we can move on? Yeah, there was no writing room at that point in time. But I think everybody was happy. I think everybody was ecstatic that it was over. and by that time they got a different huckster at that point in the match was different than the one we had used all the other time because he had to work it was embarrassing it was really embarrassing it was just it was not good I may be able to watch it now and chuckle at it but at the time and again because nobody wanted to touch it. All the geniuses thought it was so funny in the beginning. Nobody wanted to touch it. Vince was like, no, no, just go get it over with. And I did, by God, and I killed all of them. Killed every single last one of them. And used every, took all the shit, the shoe and everything that they had done and rolled it all into one and shot it right there in the studio. Didn't have to leave anywhere, anything and brought some people that weren't working and come on out and sit and let's go. Just go. Not a lot of reshoots. Just do this. Get some cutaways. Put it together. Next. It was horrible. Yeah, it was horrible. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think that this would have been better if this was a one-week, a two-week, a three-week? I know that it would have been best to do it on at all, but it does feel like by the end, it just sort of, as we say in the South, petered out. It was just too long. It went on forever. Should it have been done at all? Should it have been done, you know, fewer times? It was never funny. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look at it now. I mean, laugh my ass off at it. And I haven't watched them in years because it takes me to a bad time. So I may be able to watch it now and chuckle, but horrible, horrible, hated it. Hated the time frame, everything about it. It just didn't need to be. and we were in the process of moving forward with Sean and just doing you know different and I thought that that gave WCW a lot of ammunition that we didn't need to give them and but can't change it it was there and it's one of those times that don't look back at fondly and feel it was just some of the worst shit we ever did. I was embarrassed to be a part of that at that time. We know that some of Vince's grudges with, like, the parent-teach-all-cancel and things like that will continue to be a part of TV in the future. But do you think Vince learned something from doing these skits because it doesn't feel like he went, this direction ever again i hope so i hope so and i think that the the biggest thing is is not to give them to give them credibility and to give them eyeballs or any reason whatsoever for anybody to sample their product well i'm pretty fired up because next week we're going to be back right on time we're going to be talking about no way out 2006 and you might say to yourself self what was no way out 2006 it's kurt angle and the undertaker for the world title it's randy orton and ray mysterio to determine the number one contender for the world title we've got uh chris benoit and booker t working for the u.s title tag match with matt hardy and tatanka yeah he's back in the company and they're going to be taking on m&m jbl will be working with bobby lashley and we've got a cruiserweight open for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. All that and more coming up as we celebrate the 20-year anniversary from Baltimore, Maryland. No way out in 2006. You know, Bruce, we've got so much fun stuff to talk about anniversary-wise this year in 2026. We've got 1996, which we just talked about. We've got 2001. We've got 2006. This is going to be a fun year. You've had a chance to take a look at, get a sneak peek at our schedule this year. We've got some profiles for folks we've never talked about before, like China and others. I'm pretty fired up about Junkyard Dog and some of the really fun topics we've never talked about. Does one stand out above all the else on this year's schedule for you, Bruce? I'm just excited to be back. And I'm excited to be back, too. We are so glad that you guys are with us. Hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell, and tell a friend that Bruce is back. and to borrow a line from his friend Eric Bischoff, better than ever, at somethingtowrestle.com. Hit that subscribe button, turn on your notifications bell, and we'll see you next Friday right here on Something to Wrestle with. Bruce Prichard, rock on.