Episode 495: D-Generation X

When life gets hectic, energy ups and downs are all you need. If you're seeking energy reassurance, Eonnext can help. From smart tech that helps you take control of your energy future to always staying below the price cap with Nexpledge. We're here for whatev'lis next. Just one of the reasons why we're rated excellent on TrustPilot by our customers. Find out more at eonnext.com. Nexpledge variable rates are always below the often price cap. 25 pounds exit fee per fuel applies. Eligibility and season fees apply. TrustPilot February 2026. Did you put Christmas on a credit card? Don't stress out about that extra holiday spending. SaveWithConrad.com can help you consolidate all of your high interest rate credit cards into one much lower monthly payment. SaveWithConrad.com has helped families just like yours. Save up to $800 a month. You don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket. And did I mention no payments until March? So don't make saving money a resolution next year. Make it happen today at savewithconrad.com. Hit on the list number 2129 Equal Housing Lender. Uh. Welcome to something to wrestle with. Welcome to Revival. Earth's Prejudice. Well you know that's not a rev. Revs? No you haven't been. There's no box of gimmicks. Rumer Nenuendo. I don't deal in rumor Nenuendo. It's not a rev. Rumer Nenuendo. It's not a rev. Rumer Nenuendo. It's not a rev. Rumer Nenuendo. It's not a rev. Rumer Nenuendo. Well hey, hey, hey, hey, was he there? I was there. Something to wrestle with. DINKE. Bruce Prichard. Hey, hey, it's Conrad the Mortgage Guy and you're listening to Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard. Bruce, what's going on man? How are you? You just cut out all the good stuff. I'm great. Man, I am excited to be here with you. We are loving that we're back in a groove and a rhythm here at something to wrestle. Bruce, are you feeling like your old self? You're settling in to the something to wrestle show again. How does it feel to be back, Bobba? Uh, you know what, man? I'm in the groove. All great. Absolutely fantastic. It feels like I've done since coming back to do this. I obviously did Cody's during the same time. We started putting these in the can and then just did the undertakers. And, um, WFAN, the last show of my friends over WFAN, I was their last guest, their last requested guest and, uh, man, I'm in the groove. So I'm just doing a lot of talking hard to believe. Well, we are glad that you're here to do a lot of listening. If you haven't already hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell. Bruce is back and so is something to wrestle. Throw us a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell. You don't want to miss us the next time we're live. By the way, if you've just been listening to the show for all these years, did you know there's some pretty cool video with it now? We've upgraded the way we're doing our YouTube over at something to wrestle.com. So now we're in 4k and we've got some, some fun pictures to accompany the stories that Bruce is telling. Be sure to hit that subscribe button at something to wrestle.com. But today we're going to play one of the hits, Bruce. We're going to talk about the formation of DX. This is one of my favorite periods of the WWE. You know, in summer of 97, it doesn't feel like business is all that great for WWE. The NWO is hotter than ever on the other channel. And it feels like the company here, the World Wrestling Federation, is in a bit of a transition. Is that the right word to use a transition for 1997? I don't know. I mean, I just think the business is always in a transition. There's always times that it continues to move. It continues to cycle. And you are always, at least I hope in order to be successful, you're always transitioning and moving on and moving forward. So, um, yeah, I mean, I hope that business is always transitioning and doing different all along the way. Of course, we know that Bret Hart helped make Shawn Michaels the prior year at WrestleMania and fast forward to WrestleMania 13 and, but we have a bit of a curveball. Shawn has lost his smile. And so instead, Bret is going to be working with Stone Cold Steve Austin. I don't know that that was originally the plan, but boy, it sure did work out. A lot of people, myself included, still counted as their favorite WrestleMania match of all time. Where does that one rank for you? I think that, you know, again, it's a, it's a turning point and it's one of those situations where you take, uh, an old talent, I don't want to say he's old in age, but a talent that had been around for a while and being able to crown a new talent and be able to, to move a new talent into the position of being the guy and being the one that everything can be patterned after. So I think it was important and I think it was a great move. Bret Hart and Steve Austin had tremendous chemistry in so many ways. It was between Steve's neck injury, Bret's knee injury, the fact that they were both off for so long and also rivals during the same time. It, it really kicked off some really great stuff from Bret's heel run and Steve's baby face turn. So it was just a really good time and an exciting time because you were getting so much fresh content and new guys in the spotlight. So that, that's always a plus. It's an interesting time, 1997, because this is also a time where Sean Michaels is going to have a hair pulling fight with Bret Hart backstage. It feels like their whole thing comes to a head, uh, in the shadows of WrestleMania 13. And we're looking for, how do we introduce Sean back into the program? Somehow, some way he becomes one half of the WWE Tag Team Champions with his, I guess we'll call him frenemy, Stone Cold Steve Austin. But meanwhile, Paul Levec is still playing the Hunter Hearst Helmsley character. This is not the triple H that we're going to see years later, the motorcycle jackets and the leather and the, the sled chamber. No, this is more of a velvet, noob. Yeah. Now backstage in real life, of course, Sean Michaels, Michael Hickenbottom and Paul Levec, they're big buddies. I guess they're maybe the last two remaining members of the clique. I know we're going to talk about the formation of DX, but on some level, do you think that what we saw on camera with DX was really born out of the clique behind the scenes? Absolutely. I, you look, the two were friends and they traveled together. They hung out together and they had great chemistry offscreen. So they were friends and that always, it's like guys working against one another. The best of friends are always going to have the best of programs because they know each other so well and they can, you can communicate without speaking. And if you know your opponent well enough, you become great friends. And if you know your friend well enough, you become great opponents. And they were great friends on screen that made a terrific dynamic. People believed it. They believed that they were best friends. They believed that they were a unit and they were. Let's talk about how this becomes an onscreen thing. Monday night, raw August 11th, Hunter and his, I guess we'll call it female heater, China, inner fear on Sean's behalf in a match versus mankind. And that's really the first time that we see them associate because you have to remember Sean has been a baby face for much of the Hunter Hearst Helmsley's existence of that character in the WWF. But clearly things are changing. John is becoming more of a brat. He's becoming more of a heel. He's evolving. And now this is the first time we see almost like an affiliation at that level. And I can't help but think with the benefit of hindsight, that was a risk. Now we know it all worked out, but it was rare that you had a tippy type guy who had maybe been known as a baby face associate with a guy who respectfully was not quite at his level on the card. This does feel like Sean helping pull the Hunter Hearst Helmsley character up a little bit in 1997 to me. Don't you think? Absolutely. I mean, but that's how it happens. Yeah. You know, every time every top guy had somebody above them, bring them up. Yes. And and that's what you do. And in this case, this was an opportunity for Triple H to step up into that role and for Sean to help bring him up. And you either sink or swim, you know, it can be the greatest thing in the world or it can be the worst thing in the world because God forbid if they're not ready, then they can bring the top talent down. So in this case, I think it was a it was definitely a risk. Yes, but it was a risk to pay it off. That's exactly what I was going to suggest because, you know, if Sean wasn't comfortable in his spot and I know we all hate that phrase, but if he wasn't comfortable with his footing in the company, this would have been perceived as a huge risk. You had to have a lot of confidence in your spot in order to be willing to take this risk because if it doesn't work out instead of pulling Hunter up, you may accidentally pull yourself down. We know it all worked out. Finally, we get to see them team up together a week later. We're talking Sean Michaels and the Hunter Hearst Helmsley character. This is before triple H, but this time it's to take on mankind and the undertaker and you may remember Helmsley and mankind have been on a collision course all of 1997. Sean Michaels and the undertaker are really starting to heat up as we head into the fall of the year on the heels of SummerSlam. But the UK only pay-per-view known as one night only in September. This is the first time we see some real storyline with these characters because Hunter and China are going to act as like the insurance policy along with Rick Rude to help Sean beat the British Bulldog for the now brand new European title. And this has absolute nuclear heat in England. I do want to ask, were you trying this association on a UK only pay-per-view to just see how it fit and it felt like it was less of a risk than doing it on American TV or would it have happened regardless of where the show aired? It's going to happen regardless because what happened in the UK, we're going to play back in the US. We're going to play off those storylines. So all that was part of the story. It's not like, you know, even even at that point in time, you can't just do something in the UK and not react to it in the US. It was we were global and everything that we were doing was going everywhere. The only difference on that is is that that particular event was only available on pay-per-view in the United Kingdom. But still the storylines were going across all shows. So what it wasn't like, it was a secret that that was happening. That was all across the board. I do want to ask about October 13th, 1997. This is the first time that Shawn Michaels gives the group the name D-Generation X. And this is probably born out of Bret Hart doing promos where he was calling this faction, if you will, a gang of degenerates. Now, on a previous show, you had said that Shawn and Hunter came up with the idea of appearing on TV together back in July of 97. Do you recall how they pitched that? It feels like it has to be a Shawn idea because he had, for lack of a better word, the stroke at the time, right? Hi, they actually came in together. But, you know, look, the DX, the D-Generation X was born from Bret Hart. And, you know, they were originally, it was, you know, they were the Gen X. You know, okay, you know, hey, man, we're Gen X and by God, we're going to be this group. And Bret was the one, you know, instead of Generation X, you know, you're a bunch of degenerates. That's all you are degenerates. So that was like, that's pretty good. Make them D-Generation X. So they were everything that was the opposite of Generation X in their mind and just kind of more exploited, more risky or risque and controversial as much as they possibly could be. And that was the birth of DX. When they're first pitching the idea, I'm talking, of course, about the real-life Paul Levec and Michael Hickenbottom, when they're first saying, hey, we want a team together. This is July of 97. So Sean has been, I guess we'd call it a babyface, but he's definitely leaning more into a tweener. And now you've got this rich blue blood snob. How do you fit those together? Was there ever a discussion about making them a tag team or did they always know, hey, we want to do single stuff. We just want to have each other's back like a gang, sort of like the NWO was doing or how was that laid out as best you can recall? They wanted to bring their real-life friendship to the screen. And their real-life friendship was pretty much exactly what you got on screen. They hung out together. They trained together. They traveled together. They did everything together. They were pretty much inseparable outside of the ring. And in the ring, it was just to bring that friendship on screen, not necessarily as a tag team, not, you know, they didn't have a group yet. They were talking about, hey, what about, you know, looking at other guys and looking at, by God, the original double J, Jesse James and Billy Gunn to maybe be those new age outlaws and be able to bring them into the group. They saw something in them and wanted to bring them into the group. So it was, it was more a thing of, yeah, man, we're friends. We want to bring that friendship on screen. And a lot of times, man, you don't, you, it's easy revisionist history to say, oh, they turned into this great group. So, so you must have had that plan. No, it's a lot of times you put things out and you see how they evolved and you see how they grow. And that's what we did with these guys. We put them on screen. We added Rick Rood to the mix and you had great combo there with Rick Rood and China and Sean and Hunter. And it grew from there. So it wasn't, you know, man like Rood was a, was an addition just kind of out of the blue. What if, you know, we had Rick Rood come in and be kind of like a bodyguard because Rick couldn't work and couldn't take any bumps. And, you know, that was thrown out there and that was another, not great call, but it's just the way, just the way it was done and the business end of that wasn't the greatest thing in the whole wide world. But again, you try it, you do it, you move on and you make mistakes and you pivot. To be clear, you're not suggesting that you didn't like Rick Rood and DX. You're just saying maybe you should have been on something a little more concrete than a per appearance deal. What I'm saying, what I'm saying is, is that at the time the decision to bring Rick Rood in and how, and how it was done of, I must have Rick Rood. We got to have Rick Rood. We got to have Rick Rood. We got to get him, got to get him on Monday. You got to have him there. Got to have him there. Got to have him there. And got him there, but then trying to deal with Rick proved problematic. And look, I like Rick. I think Rick is probably one of the most underrated talents ever in the business. Tremendous guy. But look, Rick, Rick didn't want to sign a contract. And I don't think that, I don't think that Vince and Vince, you know, wanted to sign him to a contract. However, the way I was looking at it from a talent relations point of view was why are we putting anyone on television without a contract for an X amount of time so that we have them protected and they can't just go show up on WCW and the folks in charge at HR were like, no, I got to get this done by God. And so we got it done. So we've got it done on a nightly deal, which was not a good deal for us. And it ended up biting us in the ass. So we haven't talked about this in a long time, but I don't know that we've ever really hit on this particular piece. You said Rick didn't want to sign a contract. We know obviously he signs a contract with WCW. Is it fair to say that the full sentence is Rick didn't want to sign a contract at the value we offered him. He wanted more money. Is that fair to say? No, I'd say I would say it was fair to say that Rick wanted to do other things at least that's what he was telling us. And it wasn't because Rick agreed to the money. Rick agreed to the money that we were paying him. So we want to pay that for however many a year or two and Rick was fine with that. And if anybody tells you any different than that, then they are wrong because I'm the one that did the deal. I'm the one that was doing the dealing with Rick. And it just was simply look Bruce, I don't want to tie myself up. I still want to do these other things. And it's like, well, Rick, we need to tie you up. When I brought that back was like, just let it go. Just let it go. He's not going to go anywhere. Well, okay. That's interesting to me. I mean, do you think that if the timing wasn't what it was because we know 97 is where the company is not doing the best they ever did financially. I mean, in the month of September is when we're saying that this all really gets kicked off in a big way. That's when Vince first sits down with with Brett and says, Hey, I can't afford to honor your contract. See if you can get out of it. It feels like the company may not have been able to afford the type of offer that Rick rude would have wanted, but you're saying that's not necessarily the case. It's not had whatever sort of outside besides ECW. Maybe there was interest in Japan or he was trying to create leverage knowingly with Turner. What do you think? I think he was trying to create leverage and I and I again, that's hindsight being 2020. Right. And for whatever reason, Rick agreed to money with us. That was not even an issue. Rick agreed all of it. The only thing Rick wouldn't agree to was signing a contract for any term on it and wanted to do a per appearance deal. I think Vince wanted to do a per appearance deal. However, signing them up to a term would have allowed us to do both. But again, you know, it was, it was just a bad deal in every, every way that you can look at it because it didn't protect the company. Did get Rick rude on our television? Sure did. Did it make Rick a bigger star? Yes, it did. And it ended up biting us in the ass and that was just poor business on our part. And, you know, if I was Rick rude, I'd done the same thing. You know, what's crazy is it's just now dawning on me this entire time. I think everyone listening to this, myself included, has known the story and heard the story, but I just kind of always assumed, well, Vince couldn't justify paying Rick the money he wanted on that contract. Rick never came to us with, I want X amount of dollars. That's what we all thought as fans. And then I think we all assumed, Oh, well, JR dropped the ball because he didn't lock him down. That's the way we as fans felt about this entire time. But with the benefit of hindsight, the way you just laid it out, Rick rude started with the end in mind. He outmaneuvered the system to make sure that he could go get bigger money. How did you get Ted Turner to write a big check? Well, he had to feel like they were taking something away and Rick knew that and started with the end in mind. I'm just now realizing maybe he did. Yeah, maybe he did. But again, you know, look, the fact that that was always out there was the reason from my point of view to tie him up. Right. In other people's point of view and it wasn't necessarily the case. And I think that, you know, again, hindsight is 2020, man. And when you're in the moment, you make decisions and you make deals in the moment. And sometimes those deals can be great in the end. Sometimes they can be the drizzling shits. This one turned out to be the drizzling shits. We got use out of Rick and then we got egg on our face when Rick showed up on nitro. Same night that he's on a tape show from us. So it didn't work out in the end, but for the short short term, oh, hey, boy, great pop. Yay, Rick, rude, all that stuff and all that was great. But at the end of the day, it just wasn't good business on our end. Do you think when it was all said and done, did everybody point the finger at JR, did he become the scapegoat in this one? JR. Wasn't JR. It was Vince Russo and it was Russo who wanted him so badly and demanded he have him and then Vince telling us to get it done. And look, JR, I, you know, I'm gonna, I will bet dollars to know nuts. The JR was 100% with me as far as, you know, tying Rick Ruda. Not having anybody just dangling participle out there. So everybody who's had the end in their minds eye that this is a failure on talent relations and JR side, you're setting the record straight here. It was actually Vince Russo who was the driver behind. Was Vince Russo who really, yeah, who really wanted this and was demanding we get this done and it was Vince McMahon giving me the directive to get it done. And JR like, hey, get it done. Listen, I know that you get tired of me bringing up these three letters. It's been a long time since I did, but I'm going to do it now. Rick Rude was all over ECW TV in 1997. Do you think that Russo was watching ECW TV and that's the reason he pushed so hard. He saw he liked the way he had been positioned on that program. Absolutely. Russo loved ECW. That's where you got probably most of his ideas was from ECW. We've never talked about this, but it feels like Russo liked a lot of those ECW ideas, which makes me wonder, what do you think it would look like if Vince Russo were to actually be working in creative alongside a Paul Heyman, what they have gotten along over that have been a new, can't wait, can't wait. Oh my God. Oil and water. Look, I think, I think history will, will bear it out. All right. We talk a lot about the attitude era and people, people look at the attitude era with rose colored glasses. Go back and watch the attitude era today. Does not hold up. No. What a good shit. It was great in the moment. It was absolutely awesome, man. There's some great shit. Doesn't hold up. Okay. Don't know that what we're doing today is going to hold up in 30 years. But again, revisionist hit revisionist history in time. Bearing out Vince Russo had a two year run with Vince McMahon's ear. Vince McMahon doing the majority of the top stuff with stone cold Steve Austin and, and what have you. Every place else that Russo was gone. He went to WCW. WCW went further into the ground, eventually having to be sold after so many years, but Russo lasted there a few months. I don't know how many months, not saying two months, but however many months. I don't think he lasted even a year there. It was gone and came back and then they sold the company. Russo went to TNA and was there for a while. But. Beyond, you know, what big thing, you know, was there and when you look at at the longevity of things, I don't know that that the attitude era, man, attitude era, I look back on it fondly. I look back on it. It was a great time. It was fun to do. It was great in the moment. And. In some ways. It exploded the business beyond and in some ways hurt the business, but without that explosion, I don't know that we would have gone public. So look, you needed the attitude era and the attitude era was great. And it was a fabulous time to be alive and be in the business and be a part of all of that. I don't know the history is going to be that kind to it. You know, when you compare and contrast the overall picture and but again, we were doing unheard of, unheard of business. We were doing unheard of merchandising business, unheard of business across the board. So when you compare it to the future, you know, I don't know, but look in the moment, absolutely fabulous man. And I loved it and everybody in it had fun. We did some outlandish crazy stuff, but there were no rules when there are no rules. It's it's like, okay, when you don't have a standards and practices and you don't have a network that is saying what you cannot do, you can go do anything and ask forgiveness afterwards and you can get away with things. And then if it's successful, then they, you know, will let you get by with more things. However, when you get into it and you start looking at advertisers, you start looking at partners and you start looking at other things and you're in business to make money. And when you are alienating a huge percentage of your audience, then that's bad for business and that we had. That's why they had to curtail and go back to a PG era to get more family friendly advertisers and more partners that wanted to be associated with the WWE. There were a lot that didn't want to be associated with the Attitude Era. We were making enough on our own, creating that that didn't think we needed those partners. Then when you realize what those partners can do for you and the advertising and what have you, for business makes a huge difference and you have to curtail your product to fit that. All right, let me tell you about Coast Pay because if you run a crew, if you've got trucks on the road, you already know how fast fuel and expenses can get out of hand. Coast Pay is a modern fuel card and expense management tool built by people who've actually run crews, not theorists, not spreadsheet guys, real world operators, fuel, maintenance, materials, all on one card with real control and instant visibility. Here's what I love about it. You set real time spending limits for every driver or every vehicle, fuel only fuel and materials, certain days, certain hours. You decide and Coast enforces it automatically and you see every transaction the moment it happens. Not at the end of the month, not when accounting calls you into the office. Instantly, if somebody fills up at a weird time or tries to buy something outside their limit, you know right away. Broad protection, this actually works. No shared pins, no lost receipts, no guessing, employees check in by text, Coast verifies the purchase and you stay in control and your accounting team is going to love this automatic receipt capture, clean data. Month end goes from a multi hour nightmare to a quick review. Unlike old school fuel cards, Coast works everywhere visas accepted. Every gas station, every brand, no detours just to find a place that takes your card, no contracts, no commitments, just a smarter, simpler way to keep your operation tight and your crews moving. And right now Coast Pay is offering our listeners free gas for a day when you get started. Go to coastpay.com slash wrestle. That's coastpay.com slash wrestle free gas for a day just for getting started. I know we just got sidetracked a little bit, but I want to keep going down this road. I appreciate that you said the attitude led to the opportunity to go public and I have felt like once upon a time people inside the company probably felt like, man, I don't know if that was a net positive. Now, of course, we know long term boy, it more than proved out. Did you ever have your doubts as to whether or not that was the right move? This is what was the right move. Going or not losing control if that matter, if that makes sense. Well, I don't know that we necessarily lost control by going public, especially in the beginning because the majority stockholder was still Vince. Right. And so he was still, he was still the one that was making the decisions. And but I do from business perspective, absolutely. It was the right move. Absolutely. Um, so to that, yeah, history bears that out. Let's talk a little bit more. Let's get back on track with, uh, with the X, you know, the, this is a big risk, not only for showing as a top guy sort of reaching down and trying to pull Hunter up, but it's also a departure. The real life Paul Levec had portrayed this French snob, European snob and WCW and then comes over and does the exact same thing kind of with a Greenwich twist here in the WWF. Now he has added in February, China to the repertoire. Do you think the real life Paul was anxious to get rid of this? Or did he like the presentation of playing the snobby heel? No, I think he was anxious to get rid of it. He's more of a smart ass. I think the triple H was more of a loop all the back is than the, uh, Greenwich snob. So we, we see we, we get China added to the presentation and now we're going to, you know, transition and out of that blue blood into this new DX thing. Is there a conversation? I know that this is a different era, but we're not necessarily launching a new character. We're evolving an existing one is crafts. Is your creative services involved at any point? Are they having sketches of what this new character is going to become? Are you guys freestyling how we're going to rename the character or evolve it? Or is it just happening in real time in front of us week to week? The way I imagine. Dude, we're taking, we were taking just what was happening in real life and putting it on screen. Okay. Um, you know, backstage. Hunter was, was trips. Okay. Cause triple H Hunter first townsly. Um, and they just, you know, started that wasn't a. Crave what can we call Hunter first? Helmsley. I was not creative services. That was, that was just, what did they call them in the back? How did Sean and Hunter connect? You see their hunter trips. Triple H was cooler than Hunter Hearst Helmsley. And, and what was taking place in real life was being imitated on screen and turned up a notch. So it was, you were, you were seeing the real life characters being portrayed on screen and they weren't characters. That was just them. Let's talk about the real life click in real life. At this point, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash are 38 and 39. Meanwhile, Hunter here is 28 and Sean is 31. So you, if you're looking for that younger audience, it does feel like Hunter and Sean can sort of check the box. A lot of people looking from the outside in feel like the X was more of a, a direct answer to the NWO and the success that they were having over there. Do you think that Sean and Hunter saw what was happening with the NWO, with their buddy, with their buddies, Hall Nash and Waltman and thought, man, I wish we could do something like that here. And this was the answer to the NWO. You know, I really think it was more of a, Hey, we're buddies. I'd love to do this on screen and being able to take that. I don't know that any of it was in direct response to the NWO. It was in the fact that, Hey, this was a new heel faction that was being built. It was more so the connection, the friendship, the chemistry. It was taking place off screen. I'm like, yeah, let's get that on screen. And you let, you let things grow from there. And it wasn't, you know, I think that people look sometimes at similarities and things. And well, there's four guys, there's four guys over there, four guys over there. That's a copy. You know, it's, it's not always the case. And sometimes it's, but look, and it's going to draw comparisons, no matter what the fuck you do. All right. So, but they were on screen. Throw China in there too. You know, the three of them traveled together, did everything together and hung out together. So it was, it was just a natural, it was just an extension of, of what they did off screen on screen. I do feel like China, you know, with the early DX, that was sort of the secret sauce. That is what differentiated DX from the NWO, but it's also pretty innovative. It's pretty rare that we would have, you know, a heavyweight wrestler have a female quote unquote heavy. Did that, was that interesting to you or was that challenging to you creatively? Both. You know, look, China was such a strong character and she was mysterious, formidable. You know, you looked at her, nobody won a mess with her, man, woman or child. And she had a mystique about her. You throw her in there and then you, you got to see her sense of humor. You got to see the other guys sense of humor and their personalities come out around her and how they reacted to her, how she reacted to them, how the audience reacted to the three. So it was a pretty cool combination in that regard that you could have the two goofs, Hunter and Paul doing their stuff. And there's China, Joni in the middle, arms crossed and trying to be serious. And they always would try to break her. And when she broke, that was TV, you know, that was magnificent. It was great. It was great. So the fact that they all, they all knew each other so well, that's what made it work. I think we probably take it for granted. And I imagine younger fans do that these days it's not uncommon to see inner gender matches or women giving moves to male wrestlers. But boy, when China starts doing it, it was a whole new world. This was real innovation. Was Vince on board with that? Or did we have to warm him up to the idea? I don't think Vince was really on board with it in the beginning. I think he warmed up to it once he saw it and felt it. A lot of times, you know, there's reservations and today, much more reservations, but in the day, there were just some reservations in general, as far as especially from a male perspective, looking at it and going, I'm not going to sell for a woman. Oh my God. But, you know, she was the ninth wonder of the world. So you're not selling for a woman. You're selling for the ninth wonder of the world, damn it. And Joni was well liked. So that helped. But look, there were still people that were not comfortable selling for her. And once they saw it, they saw, well, if Stone Cold can sell for it, then anybody can sell for it. Right. You know, Mick, oh my God, you know, Mick Foley, did a magnificent job of making China because he sold so that they had magic. That was a, that was an incredible combination as well. That was a great relationship as well with Mick Foley and Joni Lauer. They liked each other and Mick did everything he could. I credit Mick a lot for making the China character larger than life. With the benefit of hindsight, you know, we know that the big group of degenerates, Sean and Hunter, boy, they're checking those boxes. Did you think Rick Root ever fit with the group? I know he's not here long term, but had he stuck around, what would he have added to the presentation? Look, I like Rick in the role. I, and again, I'm partial to Rick. I like Rick as a human being. And I liked the fact that he was a no nonsense guy in that role. He could be one of the guys, but yet he was a serious guy. You didn't see Rick doing the clowning around and joking around. Rick was a serious guy with the mean mug. And, you know, I'm, I'm the, I'm the male China, you know. He was, he was cool. He was cool, man. He wore, you know, he wore a suit and looked good and just, uh, he was a straight man, but he was also, he was the male enforcer. And, but China did all of his Cali, so it was interesting. It was different. So that helped too. You would expect Rick to do a lot more of the physical stuff. And what you would expect him to do, China was doing. And it was the, the eater of the mind of, oh my God, they get through her, they get to Rick, they're really going to get killed. So again, I think that Rick could have fit in that group and could have been, been in that, in that mix and maintained a level of just mystery and, and, and all the above. This is a major shift in tone from the new generation where we had going to clown and IRS and some of these other occupational, almost cartoonish type gimmicks. And now we've got DX mocking tradition. They're humiliating legends like Sergeant Slaughter. They're calling the beloved commentator, Jim Ross at the time, a fat tub of goo. Well, did the Vincent creative? I mean, obviously Russo knows what he's looking for here, but was Vince on board with this? Like, we're not that far removed from the new generation stuff. Or do you think Vince was like, Hey, we got to try something. Well, a lot of it was Sean Michaels going out and doing things live, knowing that it couldn't be edited and taking that, taking that risk. Leap of faith. Look, man, Sean yelling the infamous interview with JR. Sean was fined heavily for that. Great stuff to strengths. Yes. Well, Sean, look, he was, he was fine and he was disciplined for that. And yet Sean continued to do it. And Sean would do it in ways that, okay, I'm not going to do it. Okay. That did it pay off next week? Was there something that it led to? And if it did and it paid off, then you could buy into it. If it went too far, then they were reprimanded. They had to, you know, go in the doghouse for a day or two. But the whole presentation, I think, once Vince bought into the edgier is better. That, you know, then they got carte blanche in many ways. And we pushed that envelope as far as we could. The, I think the, the USA network in the beginning was a little apprehensive. And we're like, what the hell? And they saw ratings going up and they thought, okay, well, you know, maybe, maybe this is a good thing. And, and people starting to talk about it and what have you, but it wasn't, look, it wasn't just the ex. It was, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin and he was edgy and he had that unpredictability and explosiveness about him. It was different than everybody else. So, you know, you look at, you look at everything combined and it was a time in which we were growing and changing up. And yeah, it was, it was during a time where, you know, Russo had done the raw magazine and all this shit. And by God, this is what we need. And we need attitude and all this other crap. And we did, we needed to change. No doubt about it. We needed that change, needed a new voice, needed somebody to, to challenge Vince McMahon and to get him to try something new because the voices that had been talking to him for so long, we were saying a lot of the same things. But it was coming, it was coming from the same people that had been telling them all along. So now a new voice goes, oh my God, right. And then everybody applauded it. Look, everybody was happy because it was changes that, some changes that needed to be made. Did it go a little far at times? Sure. Absolutely it did. And again, those are, you know, hindsight observations that you can look at and go, I might have gone too far there. But at the time it was how far could we go? If you push, you went that far, there was always, can we go just a little bit further? It was like DX pissing on motorcycles. And it was somebody coming to me with the color of the urine. What color should the urine be? Okay, they're not actually peeing on the motorcycles. It's actually really water, but it's colored water. Now what color, what tint should the urine be exactly? I got a guy there with bottles showing me different tints of urine. Well, he's that this was dehydrated by God. Well, my God, he's got a little bit too much, whatever it is. So the ridiculousness, the ludicrous, it just was on every level out there, man. And yeah, it was, we pushed that envelope big time and DX was leading that charge. By November of 97 DX has found its identity. The entrance with break it down done by the Chris Warren DX band. By the way, revolutionary. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was going to show you, by the way, that's some really hydrated urine right there. That's hydrated. Okay. Okay. Bad. Chris. Yeah. There's rapid fire cuts to stock footage of riots and nightclubs and I don't know, other edgy generation X pop culture stuff. Uh, who deserves some credit for putting that together? Um, you know, it was a time where I don't think that really Jim Johnson is going to write music for degeneration X because it's not going to sound like Bam Bam Bigelow. So it was getting out there and finding different bands with an edge and it was an attempt to get out and get beyond our comfort zone and go out and find some folks to do some original stuff for us. And that's, you know, what happened? So it was, this was an attempt to get out there and try something new and have a completely different sound and a different look. And it felt different than everything else that we were doing. I, um, I absolutely love the presentation. It felt so different than we know that, uh, Bret Hart is going to be leaving the company in November of 97 and we're just weeks away from the biggest WCW pay per view in history. So it feels like all the momentum is firmly on the WCW side. We've lost another top star and they're going to have stark eight 97, which is the culmination or so we thought at the time of the NWA storyline or NWO storyline. But just four weeks after Montreal, as a matter of fact, I'm maybe tipping my hand too much as you are now recording right now. It's December 7th and that's the anniversary of degeneration X, the pay per view. It's the first ever pay per view that was like named around a faction. And Sean is going to defend the WWF title against Ken Shamrock. Triple H is going to be wrestling sergeant slaughter. And the group is really sitting firmly on top of the company on the heels of Montreal. You kind of don't have a choice. You know, Sean's the world champ. This is the hottest thing we got. The NWO on the other side, as a heel faction has been running rough shot. That's working for WCW. Now we've got our own group of heel degenerates at the top of the card on the WWF side. Was there anybody in the company, maybe in these creative discussions who's like, I don't know about this. It feels a little too follow the leader for the NWO or was everybody on board because it was so new and edgy? I don't think so. I don't think it's followed the leader at all. I think it's more a situation of we're doing our thing. They're doing their thing. And it was different and they had, God damn, by that time, I think they had a million people in the NWO and it had grown so much. And it was also a point, making no mistake about it. We were watching what they were doing, but not trying to copy it and try to stay away from it as best that we could, but it wasn't a monkey see monkey do situation. And we were trying to do our own thing and it got to the point of, I don't care what they're doing, let's focus on what we're doing. And that's, you know, every, every time that you get your head out of what everybody else is doing in reacting, New York is acting instead of reacting in that regard is, is better. So you can't, when you get tied up, man, and we all do it, we do it in life. We do it in business where you're reacting to what everybody else is doing sometimes and you're not worried about your own business. That's when you start to falter. So this was, you know, more of the time of where we were looking at what we were doing and okay, great, they're doing great. It's whatever I tied, right? This is all ships, all that stuff. Everybody was starting to do, do well at this point. Business was starting to turn around, especially on live event business. So we knew that we were presenting and the beautiful thing about it was, is on those live events, we were, we were beating them on live events, especially once they had started with the NWO live events because they were killing markets with nobody showing up. They would have cards with 50% of the card not showing up that was advertised. Right. And they were hurting markets. We were delivering. So the goodwill in the markets was, man, that pendulum was swinging the other way. And, you know, all those, they made the stars, they were able to do whatever they wanted, they were able to show up whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted. And they were, they were hurting and we were trying to do the opposite as far as we were focusing on our stuff. We made sure and it was a different look, it was a different algorithm. The NWO and the WCW guys were guaranteed money. Our guys needed to work. And when they worked and when we did well, they did well. So they wanted to work and they wanted to work hard. They wanted to see the business go up. And so they were working hard to make that happen. Do you think working on off of a house rather than guaranteed money way back when created more of a team environment for WWF than it did for WCW? I know you weren't at WCW, so you can't really answer that, but it does feel like, Hey, if, if we all work together and we put on the best card possible, we'll all make more money together. Well, that wasn't necessarily the case in WCW, right? Do you think that added to anything? Oh, absolutely. 100%. It was a completely different morale situation. Because the guys that weren't, weren't making the big guaranteed money that were going to the live events for WCW that were guaranteed a lot less money. They were making it. And I daresay they were feeling threatened if they didn't make those live events with the top guys that were putting the positions to draw the house. Weren't showing up, but still getting their money. On our end, it was, Hey, man, I want to be on the show. I want to help draw. And everybody wanted, first of all, everybody wanted to be in the top spot. There was competition there. And everybody was fighting to make the shows the very best they could because they saw that, man, when we come back, it's going to be even better. So yeah, it was a different, it was a different mentality. And I think that the talking to, to the folks that were in WCW at the time talent who did have guaranteed contracts and a lot of them did have the attitude of just pay me, man, just pay me a show up when I want to show up. I'll make TV. I'll always be there for TV. That's the only thing that matters. And it was, it was just a completely different attitude. It did feel like in this time, the WWE locker room was probably operating from a place of, Hey, what's best for the company? And perhaps WCW was operating from a place of what's best for me. Right. I think so. Yes. I think that they were looking at, Hey, well, God, look at our television. We're this one. And also looking at it with a. I towards this will never end. And that's dangerous, man, no matter, you know, when you're on top and everything, you, you, you have to, I've been through enough of, I know it can end. And I know that, you know, a lot of times as hard as you work and everything that there are times that it's going to cycle out, you're going to have to start rebuilding all over again. And it will end if you don't look after it and you don't continually, you've got to feed the machine, man. And that machine is hungry. And it never loses its appetite. So yeah, it's, it won't last if you don't take care of it. And I think that the, the guys seen, well, Hey, okay, live events are up. We're making, we are making more money. You know, the guys started, you know, they went from, they'd been through that, that slump of not making a lot of money. And God, man, the houses weren't good. Business wasn't good. To all of a sudden now they're seeing the live event business up and their paychecks are up. So they're working harder and harder to make those even more. So yeah, it was, it was, I mean, it was a completely, completely different attitude, no pun intended in the locker rooms. Let's talk about those live events. I love that you've characterized those a few times because it feels like that was always a measuring stick for events. I'm not saying it always was, but way back when that was probably one of Vince's tried and true indicators of how his business really doing. How are people really opening up their wallets and coming out and buying a ticket? And we see in the fall, I guess it's September of 1997, there's some almost riot like situations on WWF house shows. And it feels like that too is born out of what people have seen wrestling fans have seen on WCW where it became commonplace for fans to throw trash and things like that at the ring. Does any of this ever create some sort of an internal argument about DX and the direction we were headed in 97 or 98? Do you remember there being a big argument at any point about the direction of DX? And if so, what was that argument born out of? I think at times there were discussions of, are we going too far? Are we, you know, if you go back and you look, we, you know, we wouldn't show, especially if it was a tape show, somebody threw something, you never saw that. You didn't see it because we never wanted to encourage that. And in addition to that, if that type of thing happened, tried to discourage it as quickly as possible in live events and there's situations where it did get out of hand. And a lot of times that's just simply because, hey, if you see it growing, you nip it in the bud as quickly as you can. And before it gets way too far, but as soon as, you know, as soon as talent encourages it, it's going to come, man. So yes, there were concerns as far as encouraging that type of behavior from the audience. And that starts with the talent that starts with them encouraging it and what they're doing in the ring. And you just can't do that. It's cool. There's to me, you know, I go back to God, every spot show we used to run in Texas. My God, we had a riot. Wasn't that great? The excitement of doing that is a teenager and being in my twenties when I loved to fight nightly, love that adrenaline, that excitement. Oh my God, we had such a hot finish. They were coming over the railing. We had to fight our way all the way back to the dressing room. That's all cool until you get knifed. That's all cool till you get your ass kicked. That's all cool until your car gets destroyed. That's not something, again, in hindsight, when you think of, do you want to take your kids or do you even want to go to an event where I'm going to get hit with a bottle or something and crack my head open? Do you want to go there where your kids going to get drowned in beer and get hit in the head with an errant, you know, whatever? You don't want to do that. So it's not a really good environment. And so that we did try to curtail and try to discourage as much as possible. But again, you know, also with the Attitude Era, we were leaning into that older demographic, leading into that more raunchy demographic, if you will. And we played into it. We played into it. And again, we played ourselves into it, played ourselves out of it. Let's talk about Royal Rumble 1998. This is when things for DX really start to change and evolve almost accidentally. There's our pretty famous casket match with the Undertaker. We know we're going to have the cane piece and we're going to set the casket on fire. But before that happens, Shawn sets his back on fire and he goes over the top rope and hits the edge of that casket. And he goes over the top rope and hits the edge of that casket. And he's hurting for certain. And of course, this leads to a lot of people wondering, oh, the timing of this is curious as he losing his smile like he did the year prior. I know this has proven out that, you know, this is going to be the end of his entering career for a few years at the time. Are you aware of how serious his back issue was here? Or did you think, but this is maybe Shawn just being difficult, Shawn, in this era of his life? No, we knew pretty quickly. We knew pretty quickly from sending him to your specialist to get it checked out and to see how bad it was and what needed to be done. So we knew pretty quickly. I think if, you know, obviously if he hadn't gone to doctors and everything, then just said, oh, I'm bad, I'm bad, you would wonder. But not only did he go to his doctors, he went to our doctor. But not only did he go to his doctors, he went to our doctors and we did everything that we could to try and see how bad this was and what needed to happen. And it was bad. And now the question was, can we get him to mania? Is it, is it so bad he needs to stop right now? Can he do this in six months? Can you do it in three months? What have you? And the doctors felt comfortable that he, okay. You know, it's not ideal, but he's not really going to do any more damage here. As long as he is comfortable with what he's doing and everything that he does, he's comfortable in doing and protects himself on that. Then, you know, we can do it after WrestleMania. So that was the path we chose. And that was past that Sean chose. And he wanted to, you know, go out and crown Steve the champion. And, you know, he made us pay for along the way. You know, Sean being Sean. And it's, you know, it's funny throughout. God, I've known Sean for over 40 years. And, you know, you go back to, to those days all the way through. I don't think that Sean and I have ever had, you know, a crossword. You know, we've argued, but I don't know that it's, it's ever been a situation where we've always been able to talk to each other civilly. And I've always been able to talk to him and let him vent. And I also feel that Sean has been pretty, pretty honest. He could be pretty brutal sometimes, but at the same time, man, what people, what people perceived as difficult, I perceived as, that's just Sean. And I had a different relationship with him and knew that, OK, he's hurt. We're going to do this. And also it's kind of how you handled him as well. If you, if you reacted to him acting out, then he had you. If you reacted and just said, OK, then we'll do this. Wait a minute. No, I'll do that. I was like, thing. So it just depends. And and we knew pretty quickly, we knew pretty quickly that that was a bad, you know, it was a bad bump. It was an injury that needed to be taken care of. And for long term needed to be taken care of. It was also an injury that. Don't know if it was career ending at that point. And I think that Sean probably felt it was. And no one really, you don't really know until you do it. And you come out of it on the other side and then you start testing it and you see where you land. Let's talk about where we landed the night after the Royal Rumble. It's January 19th. And it's announced that Mike Tyson is going to be a part of WrestleMania 14. Now, this is a huge moment for the company, because as you may recall, he bit of Andrew Holyfield's ear. Prior June. So we're like six months removed from the most controversial man in the history, the pay-per-view king. And now he's on the outside looking in. He's no longer able to fight on pay-per-view because he's got some real problems with the boxing commissions because of this. So he's looking for an opportunity to keep his name out there and have a little fun and make some money. And clearly he is a big wrestling fan. And let's not forget that on the other channel, they've had tremendous success in as far as mainstream coverage with getting a guy who really was a part of pop culture in 1997. I'm talking, of course, about Dennis Rodman. Dennis Rodman throwing on an NWO shirt makes sports center and all kinds of other cover. Well, we get him. I can't believe this is real on March 2nd. It looks like Sean Michaels and Mike Tyson are going to fight, but instead Sean tears off Tyson's shirt and reveals that Mike Tyson is wearing a DX shirt. The building explodes. Now, I'm not going to say that, you know, this made the DX merch as popular the end as the NWO merch. I don't think that was necessarily the case. And I do think in retrospect, it's easy to say, well, if he would have worn an Austin shirt, it would have been bigger, perhaps, but appreciate the context. Mike Tyson had just been released from prison for rape. So this is a guy who already had some heat and stink. And so if you're going to have this heel character who has a bad criminal history and now he's a bad boy in boxing, he's banned from boxing, providing an ear. It leans into the degenerate DX nature. But the image of Tyson wearing the DX shirt, man, that had to be worth its weight in gold events, didn't it? Absolutely. And again, you look at you look at the whole thing and Mike Tyson. No matter whether you love him or you hate him, Mike Tyson was a huge star. Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson, equal ratings, Mike Tyson, equal pay-per-view buys. And he was controversial. He was controversial in every way. There was still large segment of the audience that loved Mike Tyson, no matter what he did. So the idea of Mike Tyson joining DX, a made DX cool and even more controversial. And it made, you know, it put Tyson more in the storyline versus just being a an impartial ref, if you will, or just a an impartial bystander in this. I'm just going to be the enforcer made him more part of the story and gave him gave him a story with Steve. And there was conflict then with him and Steve Austin. So it was a yeah, that was a genius move. I do want to ask, you know, I think everybody watching this, I shouldn't say everybody. A lot of people my age grew up watching Mike Tyson and remember playing Mike Tyson's punch out. And he was one of the more intimidating figures in all of pop culture. Like his stardowns that he would have during boxing matches were absolutely legendary. And everybody knew that. So he's a pretty intimidating guy. But we also know that he was a professional wrestling fan. Was there a concern that, you know, he was intimidating when he was trying to sell a fight and he really was going to fight. But did he perceive wrestling as, I don't know, a silly fun thing? Was there a concern that Tyson would be able to flip the switch and take it seriously and not kind of laugh at all? He did a great job, but it had to feel like a risk. Like what if he doesn't take this seriously and it just dies? Mike Tyson was a lifelong fan and Mike Tyson loved the business. I don't think that Mike Tyson ever viewed the business as silly in any way, shape or form. I think that Mike, you know, frankly, Mike, I go back to the Buster Douglas fight when we were going to have Mike Tyson referee the match with Randy Savage. And it just, you know, we have footage of Mike Tyson talking about being afraid of Hulk Hogan. It's a shoot. You know, what am I going to do if Hulk Hogan decides to attack me and body slam me? What am I going to do? So Mike had a great deal of respect for the business. No way did he think it was silly or anything like that. Had a great deal of respect for it and was in a was a bit odd by the business. But most importantly, he had respect for the business and he had respect for those that did it. I would say about Mike Tyson as far as, you know, you hear things about people from the outside in and in the media and different people will have their viewpoints of people. And they get those narratives out there so that your opinion of them is tarnished based on someone else's opinions. Then when you meet them, all of a sudden you find out, oh my gosh, this is a completely different human being than what has been portrayed in the press. And that was definitely the case with Mike Tyson. I thought that Mike was one of the nicest guys that we had ever dealt with. Very professional. And man dedicated and he was all in. I see why he was as great of a fighter as he was because he was very disciplined in in in the things that Mike was disciplined in. Mike was very disciplined and Mike loved the wrestling business. It had gone all the way back, man. He grew up watching Gorilla Monsoon and Bruno and all those guys and and he loved it. And I dare say if Mike wasn't the greatest boxer at the time that Mike would have dabbled in the wrestling business, but he was he was just that kind of guy. And he loved everything about it, loved being around it. Isn't that one of the biggest what ifs like what if, you know, I know you guys got Lawrence Taylor to main event in a WrestleMania at WrestleMania 11. But what if you could have gotten a Mike Tyson versus a whole Kogan or a Mike Tyson versus a stone called like, obviously, it worked out. The company's worth more money than anybody could have ever imagined. But that as a marquee match up. And I understand all the reasons it couldn't happen because Mike stood to make so much more money in boxing. He couldn't risk it. But that's got to be the one that got away for you and Vince. Don't you think? Yeah, you know, it would have been nice to have. But also at the same time, you would have had to sustain that. So you bring Mike Tyson in, you do a one off of Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson's, you know, beats one of your top guys, then Mike Tyson is gone. OK, it's great for a moment. And by God, we've done that and probably will do it again. But it's you have to weigh that as well versus being able to use their celebrity and their stardom to draw people outside people in to sample your product and see it and get your guys over. And spotlight your talent, your stories. But man, you know, God, I would have loved to have had Mike Tyson for a series of three, if you will, and be able to just have had that star power. But also not just the star power, man. You know, you go back and I don't know we're getting off the X for a minute, but like the Mike Tyson deal. The Mike Tyson deal changed. The night that we were in, where the hell were we after the Royal Rumble, whatever that California town was, where Mike we had the shoving thing with Steve. We changed the deal that night. Vince came back and said, we've got to sit with him. Do you think he'll do more? Because if we can get him to do more, oh my God, the things we can do. And we laid out a plan in Vince's office. I went over with JR and went into Mike's dressing room where he was laying into his people. And I mean, he was chewing their ass about something. And that was where Mike's, if you go back and watch that, Mike had like $10,000 in his coat pocket. When Steve shoved him, they all started going. The money, the money was flying everywhere. And you see all of his people like, oh my God, on the floor grabbing up all the hundreds. And so they were like counting all of his money. We went back in and Mike went from chewing them out to almost like a little kid when he came in and apologized profusely. I'm sorry you guys had to see that. So sorry. I hope, you know, I didn't mean to disrespect you in that way. It's like, dude, it's all good. No problem. No, sometimes we all get like that and all that shit. But, but we talked to Mike, we talked his management that night. And when Mike heard he could be more involved and do more things and just we do this and we do another thing. And then we go to WrestleMania. That Mike, could you do TVs? Could you do this and this and this and this and this and be a part of this promotion all the way through. And in his, his manager didn't make that decision. Mike made that decision. Mike was like, yes, whatever we can do, I want to do it all. So that was that was kind of guy Mike Tyson was. And I think Mike is a man. He's a he's an enigma. He's one of a kind and great fighter. But I found him to be a great guy to work with. Professional and easy to and he was. He was like, you know, they wrote the comment or showed that song about me, you know, I'm easy like Sunday morning. That was Mike Tyson. It was easy. Fresno, I think is the town you think? Yeah, president. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know these days it's easy for people who are big WWE fans to take this for granted. I mean, hell, WWE PLEs are on ESPN right now. But once upon a time, it was almost unheard of to see WWF coverage on ESPN. But it wasn't just on ESPN. Tyson was a media sensation. I don't know that there's even someone that we could draw a parallel to in a modern day. Is there anybody out there who has a stronghold on the media the way Tyson did in early 98? And you know, media is just so fragmented today that it's yeah, it's a different world and Mike, Mike was captivating. Everything Mike did was news. If Mike crossed the street on a, you know, do not cross that made the news. And he was an interesting character that people were intrigued and curious about. And Mike fed that curiosity as best that he could. And he came up and he was he was a polarizing individual. That's for sure. But Mike, yeah, man, people want to know what he was doing. They want to be a part of it. They want to see what he would do next. Oh my God, is he going to bite stone colds ear off? He's going to bite his nose off. What's he going to do? And and Mike, Mike fed into that. And he, I think he, he enjoyed that. That part of his celebrity. Well, you guys leveraged it for yourself at the WrestleMania 14 press conference. It's March 5th, 1998. This is a huge deal for the company. That's been said many times. This is the biggest press conference that WWE had ever done at this point. Bigger than Hogan Andre at three, bigger than the first WrestleMania, bigger than the stuff that Trump Plaza, bigger than Bam, Bam, Bigelow and Lawrence Taylor. Nobody had captivated the mass media the way Mike Tyson had. I mean, we're talking like 60 outlets there, real media, real scrutiny and a real spotlight on WWE. Sean is here. And if you're looking his eyes at that press conference, you can tell he's an obvious pain, but the entire presentation that day feels like it's largely based around how hot the Stone Cold Steve Austin character is and the controversy surrounding Mike Tyson. Do you think at this point, Sean felt like, obviously he's in his head about his back injury, but he's also the champ and he's been carrying the company through a down period and now he probably, rightfully so, maybe he feels like, hey, wait a minute, this isn't fair. This thing's blowing up and I'm kind of in the backdrop. Do you think Sean was thinking that at this point that my career may be over? I'm hurting and now they're getting hot and I'm not here to really be as big of a part of it as I should be. I'm here too, damn it. Do you think some of that existed? Did he have a chip on his shoulder? 100%. Sean always has a chip on his shoulder. And Sean felt that, you know, he was, the champion was the story. The champion was a guy that Steve had to beat and that Mike was a side show. So, you know, from Sean's point of view, Sean was like, hey, man, I've been carrying everything on my back and here I am. And this may be my last match and it's all about these two guys. And it was, you know, it was. So we were going into this knowing on the other side, we didn't have Sean. Knowing that we only had Mike Tyson for this period of time up until WrestleMania. And after that, we've got to focus on Stone Cold Steve Austin. So yes, we were using Sean. Sean may have already been in the rear view mirror. And I think from Sean's perspective that, you know, everybody was already looking at it in that regard that Sean was an afterthought. So sure, I think he was big time in his fields. I hate that we have to talk this way, but when you know, hey, he's injured. We don't know that he's going to be able to continue. So we got to think about what's next. How quickly did you guys, as best you can recall, decide on, all right, we're going to have Mike Tyson knock Sean out. And then the next night we're going to pass this DX momentum to triple H. We're going to use this momentum that's been on DX because of the affiliation with Mike Tyson, and we're going to flip it in one night. And the next night we're going with Hunter and we're just going to move him up into the Sean spot because I imagine that you guys have to have that laid out in advance. And that probably means you're going to have some conversations with the real life Paul of that can say, Hey man, we're going to lean on you. You're up next. You know, are you ready for this responsibility? Are you ready to carry the mantle? But at the same time, his real life best friend is struggling, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally, maybe chemically. There's a lot going on. Talk me through that. Yes, life. It's simply life. And the strong survive in this point in time. The king of the jungle, Sean was going out to pasture. No one knew what was on the other side. Sean didn't know. We didn't know. What we did know was that we didn't want to lose DX and DX had momentum and DX, you know, was still a viable group. So to be able to take DX and continue on, it's all right. Triple H. Here's your opportunity. You can either step up and take off or you can shit bed one of the two. And it was time to just give him that opportunity to see if he could stand on his own, if he could be the leader, if he could be the guy to take it to the next level and you know, guys giving that opportunity all the time. Some make it, some don't. But yeah, everybody knew. Everybody knew what was going to happen next and we had to try and that's, that's the thing. You got to break a few eggs and this was an opportunity for those guys to either soar or die. Did it cause a rift? As best you can tell, I'm talking in the days leading up to WrestleMania. Sean had to know what was next. Hunter had to know what was next, but they still able to maintain that friendship. I know that, you know, Hunter's going to wrestle third on the card that night against WrestleMania against Owen Hart and successfully defend his European title against Owen. But then after the show is over and Sean Michaels has been knocked out, he is none too happy and there's been footage that's released in more recent years where he absolutely explodes on Shane McMahon and is kicking doors open. Did that fracture the real life relationship? As best you can tell between Hunter and Sean at the time. No, no, you don't. Hunter in real life, they were friends and Hunter dealt with Sean in every frame of mind that there was. Got it. Whether Sean had drank to excess or taken too many of whatever to excess Hunter had dealt with that for years and they remained friends through it all. Got it. And that's just a testament to their friendship. I think that deep down that Hunter wanted this opportunity, didn't want it the way that it was happening with his best friend leaving. Right. And I think that Sean deep down wanted Hunter to have this opportunity and to succeed. I know that. I know that they wanted the best for each other and they both wished that Sean couldn't continue doing what he's doing, but he couldn't. And Sean was as much as Sean was pissed off about it. He was man. He was bitter that his career and his mind was coming to an end. He was happy that he got to go out and put Steve over and crown the next guy and all that stuff that there was that pride that I did that by God. There was also the human, the reality of, ah, damn it. You know, my career is over and it's not the way I want to go out. Want to go out? I want to call my shot going out. And he couldn't necessarily do that, but to know that his friend was going to continue on with something that he started with him. I think he did like that. And I think that he was, was proud of that and happy for him to do that. And that's the kind of friends they were. Look, man, they had their ups and downs, but they stuck together through all of the bullshit. And that's just a true Testament of a friend. It's the ones that are there for you when you're down. As well as when you're up. What do you remember of that night at WrestleMania and Sean's outburst at the press conference afterwards? Do you remember anything? Oh, man, I, you know, I remember the whole week, the whole week was challenging just in general because Sean was in a, in a lot of pain. Sean wasn't necessarily the most rational guy, uh, on the planet at that point in time. And he made things as difficult as he could for everybody that he came in contact with. It was, I want my own dressing room. I want this, one more parents here. I want this, I want that. And, you know, Sean pushed everybody's buttons. I think that it was like, you're going to remember me by God on the way out. And Vince had a soft spot for Sean. I think I always did, always will. And he put up with it. And, and we all put up with it. And it was again, it was just outbursts and, and being difficult on things, but you always knew. I think you, you fight all of those battles. You go through all of that bullshit, knowing that when the match gets in the ring, there will be nobody better on that night than Sean Michaels. And that's what Sean did. Sean was able to go out and he could back up all that shit. And at the end of the day, you were grateful. I don't know. I don't know if you're grateful. That may be the wrong word, but, but it was, it was worth putting up with all that shit to get that outcome and to get the performance that we got out of Sean on that night. It was painful, but we got it. And his ring walk that night, Bruce, his, uh, I think the kids were saying swagger. His swagger was on a thousand. Like there was nobody better. I mean, on that walk to the ring that night, it was such determination, such damn the torpedo. I don't know. It was, it was outstanding, but I've often wondered with the evolution and the way that organizations like WWE care for their athletes, would that, would he have even been given an opportunity to do that today? Like the way I'm saying perform, like if we know he's injured, and we know he's in a dark place mentally or maybe chemically, but certainly his back is ravaged. It feels like we've seen more than one time a WWE champion come out and say, Hey, I can't, I can't perform. I've got a four foot the belt, whether it was a Daniel Bryan or it was an edge or whatever. Um, but this was a different era. Oh yeah. Yeah, I see. Yeah. So talk me through that. Yes. Now I, you know, um, we look, we were almost there. And did ask the doctors opinions, the experts, can't, can he do this? And they all felt with Sean being in control as far as what Sean was going to do in the match that he could do it. It wasn't going to cause any more damage. Now, I think that with the parameters that we have today with our medical, I don't know that that would be the same today by any stretch of the imagination. And probably would have been from the moment that he was injured that he would have been shut down and probably, you know, no, I'll just tape it up and I'll go. It's a, it's a different world. So no, I don't think that I don't know that we would have gotten that match at WrestleMania, maybe. Hey, look, I mean, I'll just one thing of like in. Recent times, you know, Cody, when Cody. Torres is back. Oh, it was, it was like, there can be no more damage done to it. At all. He cannot hurt it anymore. So it's up to him is whether or not he can withstand the pain to go through the match and the medical side of it is it isn't going to change a thing. And he is he's strong enough. He's he can do everything else, but his back is torn and it's hanging there. It's up to him. It's going to hurt. And he chose to go on. I don't know that this was a, you know, that that was muscular and that was a man just torn. There's nothing really you get next thing you gotta do is attach it. So this was a spinal and I don't know that that would have been the same. I don't know. I really don't know. I'm not a doctor. So, but I don't, my guess is that he probably, we probably wouldn't have gotten to that match. That's what I've always thought is that, you know, under the modern standards and best practices that we've learned and we've evolved and we've gotten better. And shout out to WWE. I know that some people are going to hear this and say, well, you shouldn't have back then, but there's so much we didn't know back then that we know now. And there's so much more testing and it's so much more involved and the business is better for it. I'm not trying to have a debate in that regard. But I am curious, like if we applied the modern standard medically back then, what do you do for a main event, Bruce? If you go to February, so it's the month before we've got to pivot. Sean's out. What would you do? Like these flat, you slot a hunter into that spot and have Tyson be a more pivotal role. I don't know what you do with that. Yeah. I don't either. You know, the, the, there's the thought of, you know, the media thought is slightly mankind into that. That's really crazy. But that was a heel that, that would have been believable. But I don't know, man, cause you wanted to crown Steve, the WrestleMania. And I've been to do something. So yeah, it's a lot of variables that thank God didn't have to, didn't have to exploit any of those and move into any of that stuff. Hey, just in time for the holidays. What if you didn't have to worry about any of that credit card debt? If you're feeling stuck making the minimum payments and you don't want to have to put Christmas on a credit card, we can help and save with Conrad.com for routinely help our listeners save hundreds of dollars a month. Find out how much money you can save right now for free at savewithconrad.com. Man, it's an unreal history when you take a look at how DX sort of twists and evolves, but boy, it evolves on a major way the very next night. It's March 30th, 1998. Shawn Michaels is gone, his back is shattered. The Austin era has begun, but whatever version of DX that existed is now completely changed recruits on WCW programming and Shawn Michaels, who was the hypothetical leader, he's gone. So it's down to just triple H in China until we get an amazing promo. And I still think this is probably the genesis of the Monday after a WrestleMania hype with the return of Shawn Waltman, now known as X-Pac. Of course, last time we saw him here in the WWF, he was the one, two, three kid. And over there, he was six, S-Y-X-X, and then maybe six pock. Now he's X-Pac for DX. Eric Bischoff has said that he underestimated how important Shawn Waltman was to the NWO, but he saw it when it happened for DX. Waltman kind of became the straw that stirred the drink, the secret ingredient, the secret sauce. Did you know it would happen this way or what is your reaction seeing that promo and the crowd reaction in real time that night? Um, no, I didn't know. And I, frankly, I don't know that WCW would have been able to get that out of Shawn Waltman. I don't know that he would have had the same kind of impact no matter what they gave him because the NWO became just so watered down and so many people that there wasn't an opportunity for anybody new to emerge and shine in that. So the difference of all that was, it was somebody coming back from WCW to WWE. That was what made that different. So it was, you know, they're not going there. It's somebody, it's somebody coming back here and, and again, the old adage and analogy of somebody comes, you bring them in on top. They're going to be a top guy and bringing Shawn in and Shawn had that frenetic energy and charisma that, you know, he showed there and people were so happy. I think WWE fans were so happy that guy five, all right. Yeah. Another coming back here by God. And so that, I think, had more to do with it than anything else. An unbelievable promo. And it's an unbelievable moment, not just for Shawn Waltman, but for Hunter. When, when, when Hunter comes back through the curtain that night, you know, when he went out there, he was representing the shambles and what was left of DX, the last soldier and it felt like a man with no country. And even though he won, Shawn was unsuccessful and Mike Tyson just knocked him out. And they no longer control the big belt and, Hey, how's this going to go? But when Hunter comes back through the curtain that night with China and Waltman in tow, you have to feel like, I can't imagine how he felt in that moment. But that has to be the biggest night in the history of his career at that point. Is it not? Yeah. Cause it was a, it was brand new step. It was a first step. It was, all right, this could have won. You could have gone one or two ways. Could have been like, oh my God, they brought back one, two, three kids. But it wasn't viewed that way. It was viewed as, okay, man, we took somebody from them and now they're here and. Yeah, we're moving on. We're not dwelling on the past and we're, and we're moving forward. So it was just a lot of excitement and a lot of, you know, look, we had momentum. We had momentum off of Mike Tyson and now Steve. So the audience was ready for something new and it was new and it was different. And they were happy to see what was next. I feel like a lot of people probably would take a look at, say a big faction in history, like the four horsemen and say, well, when Rick Flair left, the horseman had to die because well, they're not the horsemen without Rick Flair. And maybe the same could be said for the NWO. Hey, when there's no whole Kogan in the NWO, then the whole NWO thing kind of dies. And I think a lot of people would have assumed that that's probably going to be the case for Sean Michaels because he had been the top guy that really made it possible. But you instead, after losing the leader, you double down that night after WrestleMania 14, it's not just the return of Sean Waltman and sort of lifting triple H up. It's adding two new members in the new age outlaws. They're going to join the show on the very same, join the faction on the very same show where Waltman comes back. How long had road dog? That's what he was called at the time and Rockabilly. How long had Billy Gunn and Road Dog sort of been in the sights of Sean and Hunter? Were they going to join this group? No matter what, or was it born out of necessity of, okay, without Sean, if we want to keep this thing going, we need to add new members. Who's a good fit with these guys? How does that happen? You know, it was actually Sean that I remember coming to us and saying, Hey, Road Dog and Billy, first of all, would be great as a team and we'd like to have them. So it had been a while. I think Vince wanted them to prove themselves and felt that by putting Rockabilly and Road Dog together as a team and putting them with DX, that would have been the kiss of death. They hadn't established themselves. They were just two, two middle of the road guys that add gimmicks that weren't working and I put them together. By this point, they'd earned their stripes. They had had their dumpster match with Mick Foley and Terry Funk. So they had, they had proven themselves. They, you saw their edginess, you saw their personality and they had established themselves as a team and a good team. So now adding them, it wasn't just like adding Rockabilly and Road Dog. Now you're adding the new age outlaws and they were already edgy to an edgy team. And again, it felt fresh and it felt young. So it worked. By April of 1998, DX is now a babyface act, something nobody could have ever predicted just six months prior. The most famous segment of this era, maybe even of the attitude era, one of the more famous segments happens April 27th, 1998. So we're only like a month removed from WrestleMania and DX is going to invade WCW. Of course, we've seen Triple H start to refer to the group as the DX army. And we've got the quote unquote tank, which is really a Jeep, but we've got the military uniforms, you know, the fatigues, the camo, the bullhorn, the crowd outside of the Norfolk scope. And I know we've talked about this before, but whose idea was this? Like take us to the room. Do you remember who actually suggests seriously wouldn't be, wouldn't it be funny if and then it snowballed from there? Well, the, the idea of going to Norfolk and the idea of basically invading WCW was brought up in a meeting where the question posed to the room was, what'd you do? Well, you know, what, what, what would we do back in the day if somebody was trying to come into your territory and we call them outlaw promotions? If you had the promotion and somebody came into your town or whatever, what'd you do? The, the outlaw guys would send their, their shooters, their tough guys to go sit in the front row of the opposing promotion, challenge their guys, they would make, you know, they go knock on their door. And that's exactly what I said. I raised my hand and said, well, we'd go knock on their door. We'd go to them. We'd pick a fight. And that spawned when we were in close proximity to Jay Hampton Norfolk. That's not far. Um, yeah, let's go do it. Let's go on a day. And that was the genesis of the idea was, yeah, go knock on their door and pick a fight. That's what we did. So we, you know, did the whole thing and, uh, that was a whole, whole rigmarole, but, uh, it was, it was a lot of fun. I had the, the, uh, had a major of the police department there in Norfolk that met us that was able to take us around and, uh, asked him, what can we do? Where can we go? I can't break any laws. I can't, you know, I can't trespass. I can't do this or anything else. Well, what can we do? And the officer looks at me and says, son, when you're with me, you can go wherever the hell you want to go and do whatever the hell you want to do. But, all right, but I had already been advised by our legal folks. I couldn't go in the building and that we had to, you know, we had to be careful as far as trademarks and everything like that. So we went in, uh, the, the cops actually wanted to let us in the building, uh, at the, you know, where, where the ticket takers were. And instead I was like, nah, I specifically was told I can't enter the building. And I'm standing there and, uh, uh, security on the other side was all glass doors and security on the other side opens up the door. Now it wasn't where the ticket takers were. It was, it was like a few doors over. And so there was no turnstile or anything there. And I told Hunter, I said, Hey, because he had a, uh, bullhorn and it had a microphone and he could hold the bullhorn out. But speaking of mine, I said, stick the bullhorn inside the building. Do not, whatever you do, do not step foot inside the building. But you can put the bullhorn in. And so we stood right on the edge with the bullhorn in and he was doing his announcements to the, to the folks inside the building. We did of course the, uh, the famous WCW nitro Monday nitro free tickets. That was 100% legit. That was not edited in any way, shape or form. Um, you know, the, the, which I never knew. I never knew until I was deposed in a deposition and they, their side asked me about that and they said, how did you guys edit this? This is how stupid. WCW's attorneys were, they had all the footage. Now they got me on some things on the footage, but, but they had all the footage so they could have reviewed all the footage. And they claimed that we edited the footage. I said, we didn't edit the footage and the guy goes back to show me. Well, it says right here, uh, home show, free tickets. WCW nitro Monday night. I'm like, yeah, right there. Watch it. Free tickets. WCW Monday nitro. Tell me how we edited that. You just showed me the raw tape, but that's clearly for the home show. I said, I never, ever, ever saw that home show footage until you just showed it to me right now. Hmm. It was free tickets. WCW Monday nitro. I said, can you prove to me that that's for the home show? Well, it clearly says it there. I said, no, it doesn't. And so I reach over and I hit, I cue the tape up and I hit pause. I said, no, you tell me what this says. Free tickets. WCW Monday nitro. Fuck you very much. Um, he got me on other shit, but he didn't get me on that one. What did he get you on? There was, uh, when we went in Smyrna to their offices, it's a, it was an office park and on the office park, as you entered the office park, there was a little sign that said no trespassing. And we had a camera. We had like a camcorder, a, a hi eight camcorder and road dog gets out and goes over and says, Hey, what is this? This French note, a passing. And we recorded that hot on it. I said, then we went to the door and they said, well, it clearly says no trespassing. I said, how am I supposed to know that's for the office? I said, we called, we requested, you know, to meet with people and so on and so forth and they gave us the address. We went to the front door and knocked on the front door and know that that was for them. I thought that was no trespassing on the grass. If anything, we're, we're guilty of trespassing on the grass. Yes, guilty. We trespassed and that was the only thing we got me on. But even then that was, come on, it says no trespassing. I think that means the grass. It doesn't mean that you can't go to a public office park and you can't go pull into their driveway and go knock on their door. They shared the offices with other businesses. So screw them. Where did that deposition take place? Was that in Atlanta, Connecticut? Do you recall mine was in Connecticut? Who all would have been in that meeting? But would make divot and no, I had, no, it was, I had my attorneys and they had their attorneys. Man, what a wild piece of business that is. But this DX invasion. I mean, is this, where does this rank for big things you were involved with? When you look back on the history of your career and the things that people ask about, or they remember these iconic WWE moments where your fingerprints are all over it. Does that make the list? Do you think? Top five. Yeah. Top five. Absolutely. One of the most fun things I ever did. It was, it was fun. It was also in, in that time. In those moments, specifically when we went down the ramp towards the back entrance on the Jeep, where I knew these guys were going to make it. Because again, man, that there are, there are people that when it's nut cutting time that like to kind of maybe hang back in the back and I'm going to watch everybody else do it. And then I'll say, oh, hey bro, that was my idea and I did things. But then there are those that are in it. Everybody on DX, they were in it. They were ready for whatever we were to encounter. And we went over every possibility. And there wasn't a single person there from the talent to the crew, to me and Matt Miller, that weren't ready to fight. And that weren't ready for whatever consequences, you know, we were ready to be arrested. We were ready to get our asses kicked. We were ready. We were going to be in it though. We were going to make noise no matter what we did. And there was no fear whatsoever. We went in with absolute reckless abandon and pushed every envelope as far as we possibly could from the, you know, in Smyrna, the little security guard at the WCW offices called 911 and said they were being attacked with military weapons. Oh. And. They, I mean, good God, the number of cop cars that came screeching up guns drawn. And I had, I had two Smyrna cops with me. They knew exactly what we did. Who were there for the whole thing that went and, you know, and calmed everything. But they wanted to arrest us. I already had already called our attorney and said, Hey, yeah, man, this is going down right now. I said, I'm going to, I'm going to go over and talk to him. I'm going to leave my phone on so you can hear the conversation and all this stuff. And Mike Weber was the WCW executive that came out and he was a bitching and moaning and all this shit with the cops and arrest them and arrest them. And the guy, the little security guard is him and him and him and rest them all. And so now I'm over there and I'm doing this all stuff and I'm just listening and all this shit and Mike and them, they're like arrest them. Rest us. All right. Rest us. Please. Rest us. And Weber's face went from like just gleeful to, because I knew Mike, I like Mike, but it was all of a sudden he realized, Oh shit, Bruce wants to be arrested. They want, they want to be arrested. We can't do that. We can't give them what they want because we have been arrested. Could have had access to that 911 phone call, which would have made them look so silly. We got access to it, but we didn't push it to use it. Of, of them saying we're being attacked with, you know, military weapons and all this shit. So I wanted to make it look how silly these people are. And then we had the whole time, the high eight camera shooting all this stuff from our van. You got my audio on the phone being recorded with my attorney. And we had, you know, I've got it all. So everything we did, we did calculate it when we went, when we went into, um, into Atlanta to go to the offices at CNN center after Smirna. And again, man, Billy and, and X pock and road dog and Hunter and China man, they're, they're in the shrubs, breaking off shrubs and putting leaves in their hair and camouflage and everybody was just so into it. But when we, when we go into CNN center, I had the cops from the CNN substation. There's a substation of Atlanta PD in CNN center. I had two of them that were off duty, walk us in to CNN center as our security. Ask them what we could do. Ask them what we could do. I had recordings where I called CNN center and asked for permission to record inside CNN center in the receptionist and the person calls us, you can record anything you want inside CNN center. It's an open public area and you can record anything. Yeah, you can come in, take pictures, do video, whatever you want to do. So I also had, you know, one of their, the sheets of the do's and don'ts and all this up. So when their security comes up and I, I, I now have the hi-8 camera and their security comes up and is asking me about, oh, you guys can't do this. Can you can't record in here? And they're pointing their finger right at me. You can't record in here. And I've got the camera. I'm shooting them. I said, so wait a minute. You mean to tell me I can't do this and I'm panning around. I'm shooting the DX guys over here. I'm going over here shooting the DX guys over here. I'm, I'm shooting all of it. Meantime, the crew's shooting all of it as well. And there's executives in CNN towers that recognize, or they recognized Hunter because I guess he was in there all the time. And they're up in their, in the atrium in CNN and they're all coming down to see what the commotion is. And in CNN center, they're all doing the DX cross chop. And Hunter's doing it back to them. We're all like, ah, it was, they came down and gave us a CNN passes. There I am in the background there. Yeah. And, uh, they came down and gave us passes for CNN center. So that we all had passes in the, the security's like, oh my God. And we're going, no, can you call Ted Turner's office? I'm pretty sure he'll, he'll want to see us. And they're doing it. It's as if it's as if they had the script. And all of them are going, no, no, no, we want to see Ted Turner. Tell them a triple H ninth one of the world, China. Road dog, Jesse James, that ass Billy Gunn. Oh, you know him. He may know him as six, but it's, it's X-Pac X-Pac, you know, and they're radio, radioing up to somebody in Turner's office saying these people are down. I would like to see Ted Turner. Where the fuck does that happen? And all on tape. So the, the ability for those guys to just chameleon into whatever situation they were in, that was that in, in, in those two weekends was the, those were the moments that went, these guys got it. They got balls. They, they want it. They want to be, they're willing to do whatever they're going to make fools of themselves. They're going to fight. They're going to do whatever it takes to get over. And they didn't care about the consequences. So it was, it was great shit. You know how I know that it was great shit is because if you get excited about it, you know that we fans are going to get excited about it. And boy, were we excited about it. This really helped launch DX into the mainstream. The idea that it's making the local news clearly it's catching fire. We know a few months after the invasion, you guys do the, the nation pair D I guess it was funny at the time, but boy with the benefit of hindsight, we all wish we had that one back. But then it comes to a head triple H and the rock made at SummerSlam 98 in a ladder match that really launches both guys upwards without DX and the nation as their rival factions. Do you think that these guys are in this spot or was it the faction rivalry that helped get them here? Like I think it's fair to say that without DX, it's not fair. Hunter Hearst Helmsley may have continued as a character. I'm not saying that the real life fall of equity have evolved and all that, but man, this helps launch him into the stratosphere, so to speak. And the rock, obviously he didn't have the smoothest launch, but the association with the nation and him sort of stepping to the forefront. These factions really helped lift them and their personal rival over here to see who the next guy is, right? Absolutely. And I think it's both. I think that for rock, the opportunity to be in the nation of domination and the spin off of that was if that didn't happen, who knows, we ever would have gotten the rock. So that definitely helped him with triple H without Sean leaving and leaving the DX leadership role vacant and him taking it and grabbing it. Who knows if that would have happened. So I think it's, it's definitely both. I think that the factions helped them not to say that either one of them wouldn't have made it on their own. But again, as you look back at history, those factions absolutely helped launch their singles career without doubt. So really you think about when this DX whole thing is kicked into high gear, it happens the night after WrestleMania 14, but the following year, WrestleMania 15, it feels like it unravels because triple H is going to leave DX to join the corporation. When did you first realize that DX, his fans knew it couldn't last forever? Is it because Hunter wanted to break out of the pack and be a top singles guy and didn't feel like he could do that with a faction because it was lending itself to more silly fun stuff and he needed to be a healer? What can you tell us about that? No, it was just a natural progression. I think it was just growth and progression and time to move on. And, you know, as was proven out, DX, you know, did come back later on and continue to grow, but it was just a natural progression of the talent and the guys involved. And it was an opportunity for triple H to spin out of that and go for that one, you know, the single opportunity in the single spotlight. So weren't anything was just a natural growth pattern. I don't think people talk about Hunter enough as a baby face heal dynamic. Like most people when they think about a guy like Rick Blair, they say, hey, he was a good baby face. Man, he was a great heal. But we saw DX at its peak. A hunter was a baby face, but most of us think about the reign of terror and him as a great heal. Did you have a preference? Obviously he can do both, but did you prefer him as a heal to a baby? I think it was a better heal. I do. I just think that he was a lot better heal, very snarky heal and could back up, had that intensity in the ring that it just, you wanted to hate him. Do you think that, you know, it was necessary for Hunter to, I mean, I know there's an old cliche. I don't know if you agree with it or not, but it's been around the industry a long time, I think funny doesn't draw money. Obviously DX had been fun, but in order to be looked at as that top guy, maybe you do need to get away from that. Do you think Hunter felt the pressure that, Hey, if I don't pull the trigger on this sooner rather than later, I may get typecast as like a comedic or did he realize, Hey, it's on top. We can't really grow it anymore. Now's a good time to exit. What do you think? Yeah, look, I think that, you know, a. A comedy gimmick. No, that's, that's. Is going to run its course. I think that in order to really draw money and for longevity, you have to have credibility and that, that's the important thing that you have to be able to get serious and be serious at times. Look, you can still, you can still be entertaining. Right. And still be serious and you just have to have credibility man. And again, I think, you know, you mentioned Rick Flair. Rick Flair is another one who was able to be entertaining and some people could say that Rick was funny, but Rick was entertaining. He had credibility and I think that the same thing goes for Hunter and that he is entertaining and he has the credibility. So that, look, it's just, it's a natural progression. It's just a natural move. You move it on to different things. Our new home. My God. Do you think with the benefit of hindsight, maybe we could have kept the new age outlaws together as a part of DX and keep the gag going without triple H or did you need to have triple H in that spot? Um, with the X. No, I think that once, you know, everybody kind of went in their own ways and all that stuff that they needed to go in their own ways and the outlaws in that regard, I think they were better as a unit than a team. I mean, better as a, yeah, as a unit and as a team versus singles. Um, it's just some guys, some guys are better and they find their groove is in a tag team with partners and in a group. And then when they get out on their own, you realize, oh, I'm out here without a life vest. So, and I think that the road dog and Billy would both agree with that. It's interesting to think too, because for all the parallels, people want to draw between DX and the NWO. If we're honest, the knock on the NWO has always been, Hey, it was a great story, but there was no payoff. There was no great ending. Like that never really happened. But there was at least a plan in mind. And I think some people would argue, Hey, the NWO lasted too long. Maybe we killed DX too soon, but we know that the company is going to change. Triple H is going to become the game and he's going to become the world champ. And it feels like it was with the benefit of hindsight, probably just the right time to do that. Don't you think? Yeah, because it was in looking at opponents and looking at opponents for Stephen, looking at new and fresh and, and frankly, triple H was a prime example of there were a lot of people that said, no, you know, he's not ready yet. And then you got to ask the question back. Okay. He's not ready now. When's he going to be ready? And how do we know if we don't try? So the, the opportunity to try something new and to be able to, to get a new character out of it, you know, we had to pull that trigger and go. And it worked so well that you guys have been able to lean into it. Even when you weren't a part of the company, you would see Hunter and Shawn Michaels get together and do some nostalgia DX stuff. They're having fun. They're playing the hits. They're popping the crowd. Never pretending that they're trying to recapture what they had in 97, 98. The audience is in on the gag. They know it's all fun. And it's interesting because not too long ago I was watching some old evolution matches right here on YouTube. I saw Hunter, Batista, Randy Orton and Rick Flair and evolution is kind of interesting because it clearly took inspiration from the four horsemen, but without ever actually trying to be the horseman, like evolution never said, hey, we are the new horsemen, but they were borrowing the vibe and the look and how Rick Flair is basically here in the Oli Anderson position. So that makes me ask a question here. Degeneration X, like the fans who grew up on that, they're now in their 40s and 50s. Do you think there's a way to lean into some of that old school juvenile humor and the rebellious spirit and almost the way the horsemen led to the inspiration of evolution? Do you think a DX type faction could work in 2025? Sure. Sure. Again, it has to be a 2025 version of it. Right. It has to be updated in the times today. But I think that especially right now in this time frame, that a group or even a character that lends into that controversial nature could definitely work with just the way that the world is today. Do you think whatever made DX so controversial or comedic or funny, could you replicate that energy that DX brought in 97 in 2025 without it feeling like we're hitting you over the head with this is a new DX, but more loosely inspired like evolution in the horseman war? Again, it's a brand new audience. And I think that when you look at it and people that were even alive when DX was DX, that man, it's a whole new audience that will go, D what? What? I don't know what that is. There's the gigantic audience out there that has no clue. And to your point, I mean, I feel like there was a lot of people who were watching evolution. They missed all the horsemen glory days. They didn't see any of that stuff. But I think it's so great, you know, DX with the benefit of hindsight, we can all agree was one of the biggest and brightest spots in WWE history. You just said there was a skit or a segment, the invasion that was top five for you and your incredible career. And it launched so many careers. I mean, those guys are still getting residual checks to this day and their fingerprints are all over the industry, but it only lasted a little over a year, which if you think about it, it's pretty doggone crazy. Right. This, uh, this show has been a long time coming. We have covered DX before. I'm glad we got to revisit it today and with a whole new slant. Bruce, I appreciate all the time today was a blast, man. I'm looking forward to next week. Absolutely. Let's rock on. I want to go ahead and tell everybody again, if you'd love to interact with the show, we would love to have you follow us on social media. It's that picture. Go anywhere you enjoy your podcast. You can also throw us a like at the subscribe button, but the best place to check us out is on YouTube. It's something to wrestle.com. It's totally free. Hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell, and we'll see you next week right here on something to wrestle with Bruce. Rock on.