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00:00WCW is about to dominate the globe in professional wrestling.
00:1710 million people in the United States were zeroed in on professional wrestling.
00:22We were the number one cable rated show.
00:24For almost two years, mind blowing.
00:27And when something gets too big too fast, shit's gonna hit the fan at some point, and it
00:31did.
00:32Little by little, we just fell.
00:35We already knew that we were running thin.
00:37It is so good to be king.
00:41He cared more about ratings than he cared about advertising dollars.
00:44It was a shit show.
00:47Vince Russo was just another idiot.
00:49He was there to lead to our ultimate demise.
00:52Kiss my ass!
00:54I was done.
00:55It was over.
00:56I could have cared less.
00:58No doubt in my mind, Bischoff was responsible for a little of this.
01:02Another nail in the coffin of a company that was rapidly dying at that time.
01:06I don't control that shit.
01:07I go out and I do my job.
01:10My check didn't change.
01:11It was the easiest money I ever made in my career.
01:13Like, they got what?
01:15Hey!
01:16When guys got those kind of agendas, thinking about themselves, that's pretty much when the
01:20ship started to go down.
01:21This is some fucked up shit.
01:24You ain't in Kansas anymore.
01:26You cannot sweep this under the rug.
01:30This is a fucking television show.
01:32I understand what he's doing.
01:34The real reason men come in lies.
01:36It is.
01:37At an end.
01:51I think everybody just didn't know what was happening.
02:16We were still hearing the rumors that we're just going to shut the doors, so I think at
02:20that point everybody was just really unsettled.
02:23It's easy to lose sight of how lucky we are to be a part of this.
02:27Hopefully it ain't over.
02:29WCW wrestling is so important to me, and there's just that one guy, Turner, I think, just doesn't
02:34think wrestling is cool whenever it's going to ruin millions of people.
02:39I think Turner finally started looking into the books and said, we've got to pull the plug
02:43on this.
02:44No matter how much Ted Turner loved this business and wanted to keep it afloat, you start looking
02:50at the books at that time and seeing how much money we were spending.
02:54I can only imagine how much money went out the window.
02:56Oh, my God.
02:59After Brad brought me back to kind of oversee Russo, it was apparent to me that things were
03:05more dysfunctional within Turner Broadcasting and the relationship between Turner and WCW
03:10than they had ever been.
03:11I'm not talking about what was going on in television or how much money they were making or losing.
03:15I'm just talking about the relationship.
03:18Time Warner is a company of winning brands and winning people, and so is AOL, for this
03:25merger.
03:26Just like when we put Turner Broadcasting into Time Warner, it made the company much, much
03:30stronger.
03:31And I think we're all committed to making this thing work.
03:34AOL was absolutely ubiquitous at that time in terms of, in the public consciousness, the
03:40company introduced many people to the concept of logging onto the internet for the very first
03:45time.
03:46I've been on America Online two months, and it's really been a revelation for me.
03:50You got mail!
03:53This was at the time where a lot of the new internet.com businesses were receiving wild overvaluations
04:00based on promises of future growth.
04:03If you looked at the assets besides furniture, they have a subscription list.
04:10And that's the people who subscribe to AOL.
04:13AOL's leadership in the early part of 1999 also were keenly aware of this reality as well.
04:19So one option that was considered was to merge with a media and entertainment conglomerate,
04:24which was Time Warner.
04:25The combined company, which will be called AOL Time Warner, gives each partner what it
04:30now lacks.
04:31What ended up happening is that AOL shareholders would receive 55% of the new company in Time
04:38Warner, 45%.
04:40Now, my dad's never been online in his life, never touched a computer, never owned a cell phone,
04:46never used an ATM, right?
04:47He's old school.
04:48So I think there was a whole generation gap loss on AOL's going to buy this giant company
04:56with nothing, where the older investment guys are like, well, you can't turn it down.
05:00It's hundreds of dollars a share.
05:02This is going to be awesome.
05:03We're only going to make a billion dollars.
05:05But nobody would stand up and go, this is a Ponzi scheme, man, right?
05:09This is all going to fall apart.
05:11The Blockbuster deal still needs regulatory approval and a nod from Time Warner and AOL shareholders.
05:16AOL had serious, serious issues.
05:20You know, WCW got caught up in that also.
05:24In a sense, you could say it was collateral damage.
05:27Wrestling has become fun, crazy entertainment.
05:31It's an alternative.
05:33It doesn't define our network.
05:35It's one night a week.
05:36It's a hit every Monday night, but it wasn't anymore.
05:39Because it was broken and I had to fix it, I was a physical presence there.
05:43I was in there trying to do whatever I can do to get it back on track.
05:48Bitch, my stake!
05:50A little bunch of fucking boobs.
05:53It was so bad.
05:55I really felt like, okay, stake in our heart.
05:58It was a chaotic shit show and a blur.
06:01And I said, I'm about to get the hell out of here because I've had it.
06:05You had to look out for yourself.
06:07I just felt like Brad didn't know anything about wrestling.
06:11I mean, he knew about the corporate side, but he wasn't a wrestling person.
06:14He wasn't somebody that was going to try to help save the company.
06:18It was like going through the motions.
06:20To be completely honest, I couldn't fix it.
06:23And the red kept getting redder.
06:25And the ratings kept falling and falling and falling.
06:27In addition, WCW drove away its paying audience.
06:30A look at the difference in buy rate between the uncensored pay-per-view in March of 1999
06:36and the same event just 12 months later in March of 2000.
06:40They basically put on the exact same main event.
06:42Hogan Flair, two years in a row.
06:44Hold on to your hats!
06:45One, two, three!
06:47In March of 1999, the uncensored pay-per-view enticed some 325,000 viewers to purchase the event.
06:54But just 12 months later, only 60,000 people were willing to purchase the 2000 version of WCW Uncensored.
07:02That represents a drop of 81%.
07:07The narrative is at the end of 2000, WCW had losses of around $62 million.
07:14That's the narrative.
07:15And I think that there probably is a grain of truth to that.
07:18But what people don't understand is the why.
07:23Professional wrestling is very different when you're a company like Time Warner AOL.
07:28A lot of answering to shareholders that have expectations on a monthly and quarterly basis.
07:35I think there was a lot of debt from other divisions in the company that could be allocated legally,
07:42but allocated as losses against WCW because everybody knew it was going to be written off as a loss anyway.
07:48The bullshit internal transfers that people tried to park all the trash on our books while we were getting hurt.
07:55It was clear to me at that point that Turner Broadcasting didn't want anything to do with WCW.
08:02And I said to Brad specifically, I said, Brad, why don't you let me explore selling WCW while it still has some value?
08:12Because the velocity at which WCW was losing ground at that particular time was pretty dramatic.
08:20Brad kind of chuckled at me and he said, Eric, you know this company.
08:25We don't sell anything. We buy things.
08:28So I just let it go.
08:30Fast forward.
08:32Good evening. Today we announced that the Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger of America Online and Time Warner Inc.
08:42So the merger was announced on January 11th, 2000, finalized on January 11th, 2001.
08:49There had actually been a lot of financial experts who had been predicting the imminent demise of AOL for quite some time.
08:56Keep in mind that throughout the year 2000, a number of significant things happened.
09:02We had the dotcom recession, right?
09:04We had a number of these internet companies that were going to be the darlings of the future that went belly up, which affected AOL in a serious way.
09:12Its stock price dropped by 50%, which of course creates a huge pressure to look closely at which divisions are profitable and which are registering huge losses.
09:23That put WCW even more in the crosshairs.
09:26There were a lot of executives at very senior levels.
09:30The only person standing in front of them was Ted Turner.
09:33The merger happens. Ted becomes vice chairman.
09:37You know, he was excited about that person.
09:40You know, you have an office in New York, you know, I've made it.
09:43Well, no. Your name made it. Your businesses made it.
09:47They didn't want to even hear at the board meetings from him.
09:50Ted Turner was no longer a challenge.
09:52Ted Turner was regulated to the corner and didn't have a voice or vote in his own company.
09:57You know, Ted is no longer in a position to have control over WCW and its affairs.
10:03I remember it saying, you know, we're Time Warner.
10:07Is it that important to own a wrestling company that's losing money, bleeding massively, has lost money every year of its existence except for one or two years?
10:18Is that really what Time Warner needs to own? I don't think we need this.
10:25I got a phone call from Brad.
10:26He said, so let me ask you, Eric, a couple months ago you brought up the idea of selling WCW.
10:39Do you think you could find a buyer?
10:41And I immediately said, sure.
10:43I had no idea. I'd never done anything like that before.
10:45But I assured him that I could find someone who had the resources to buy it.
10:49I said, you want me to put a deal together? You want me to try to put some people together?
10:52And he goes, see what you got.
10:54I went to a guy by the name of Peter Goober.
10:57Peter Goober, at that point in time, owned a company called Mandalay Sports and Entertainment.
11:01He's a very, very, very well-established Hollywood guy.
11:04And he said, look, I'm not interested in investing and buying WCW, but I think I know some people who may.
11:10And he put me in touch with Brian Bedal and Steve Greenberg, who owned a company called Fusion Media Ventures.
11:16Fusion Media Ventures had created the Classic Sports Network, which became ESPN Sports Classic.
11:22Brian and Steve understood media. They had great connections in New York on Wall Street.
11:27And we hit it off and started the process.
11:30I called Brad back and said, okay, I got the investment.
11:33Fusion Media funded the initial round with $5 million of their own and then went out and raised $62 million in the market.
11:41I felt like I was capable, with the financial resources and the right partners with me, that there was potential for WCW.
11:47The professional wrestling genre as a whole is indestructible.
11:51It's just a matter of the company being in the right hands.
11:55Eric was invested in trying to keep WCW alive and moving.
12:01So it was very exciting when the opportunity came up to buy it.
12:06And it wasn't surprising that he went 100% all in and just gave it all he had.
12:13We had come up with a loose plan of what we were going to do once the deal was consummated.
12:19For example, went out to Las Vegas.
12:21We met with Hard Rock and they were planning on building a entertainment theater on top of one of their parking garages that would hold about 3,500 people.
12:29So we started to negotiate the opportunity for kind of a full-time location, producing our shows in front of a live audience in Las Vegas every Monday night.
12:37And one of the initial thoughts we had is let's bring WCW back with this pay-per-view called the Big Bang.
12:45So on January 11, 2001, it appears that Fusiant Media Ventures has purchased the company.
12:53The figure that was reported at the time of the apparent sale to Fusiant was $67 million.
12:58You know, there's a lot of exuberance about, once again, this being now the turning point.
13:03Now we've got the new owners in play, now Eric Bischoff's back in his position, this is where we're off to the races.
13:08The new goal is 100 weeks in a row and that's kind of what's in the future for WCW.
13:12We always looked at this as a partnership between us and Eric.
13:17You know, we certainly aren't buying this because we think it should just stay number two.
13:24We won't be satisfied until this thing is number one again and our goal this time is 100 weeks, not 96 weeks in a row.
13:32Oh, I was excited. I thought, you know, okay, great, this is gonna open a new door.
13:37We're gonna continue to go on like we are.
13:39I think we were gonna see a smarter, newer, more refreshed version of Eric.
13:44He looked really gung-ho to make this work.
13:47Turner Broadcasting guaranteed us our time slot on Monday night and Thursday night.
13:52So our job was then to produce the show, find the advertisers, and turn the show profitable.
13:57I remember that being part of the deal, and I like that as part of the deal.
14:01Knowing that you've got that slot, then being able to calculate what the advertising value of that's gonna be is critical.
14:08So it was a fait accompli as far as we were concerned, and we were scheduled to close that deal.
14:16On March the 6th, Jamie Kellner is announced as the new CEO of Turner Broadcasting.
14:22Jamie Kellner is someone whose reputation certainly preceded him in the television business.
14:26He is credited with having a huge influence over the growth of the Fox network, and then actually becoming a founding partner of the WB network.
14:35And upon being appointed to the role, his initial comments to the press were that, I'm paraphrasing, this is a great company full of great people.
14:44I'm gonna try not to mess things up. I'm going to tweak it.
14:47Jamie Kellner was one of the best television executives in the business.
14:52But Jamie hated wrestling. He hated it. You know, he hated it, didn't get it, didn't want anything to do with it.
14:59It was a pain in the ass, and we were losing so much money all the time that I think I made the suggestion to sell WCW.
15:07I don't know if it came from me or somebody suggested it, and I latched on to it.
15:12And Jamie was like, yep, get rid of this as fast as you can. I don't want anything to do with it.
15:17March 16th, Brad Siegel sends out a memo advising WCW employees there's gonna be a period of hiatus.
15:24Then just a few days later...
15:27Actually, there's not gonna be hiatus, but the programming is being canceled after a 29-year run on the Turner Networks.
15:35And that leads us to an episode of Monday Nitro in the midst of all of this chaos that has to occur in Gainesville, Florida, that Monday evening.
15:44Many of you may know that for the past six months I've been working with a group of people whose goal it was, and is, to acquire world championship wrestling.
15:53But recently we've hit a couple roadblocks that may be, in fact, brick walls.
15:59And while it is still in my power, I want to do something befitting what could be very well the last night of wrestling on the Turner Networks.
16:11That being said, I'll see you all in Panama City next Monday night, the Night of Champions.
16:17Incredible!
16:18We were just getting ready to close, and I got a call from Brian Badal, and Brian said, Eric, it's done.
16:28I said, congratulations, Brian.
16:30He said, no, you don't understand. It's done.
16:32The deal is over. It's off the table.
16:35We were rounding third heading for home, and there was no warning whatsoever.
16:41It came completely out of the blue.
16:44Jamie Kellner, he was the head dog.
16:46And he looked at the WCW deal and contemplated us having at least a couple years of two hours of primetime on Monday night,
16:54two hours of primetime on Thursday night.
16:56And Kellner didn't want that beachfront property to be dedicated to wrestling content.
17:01He wanted that primetime schedule for other programming.
17:04The cold, hard truth is that WCW was completely reliant on television.
17:09So much so, in fact, that Eric Bischoff famously quipped that without television, the company was worth 20 bucks, if anything.
17:17So at that point, when you take the television distribution off the table, you're taking 90% of the revenue out of the equation.
17:24The deal was not worth it to us. It effectively killed the deal.
17:28I was devastated.
17:34What am I doing here?
17:35What? Yes.
17:36Stu. Snyder.
17:37Ready. Go.
17:38Action.
17:40Growing up, I loved wrestling.
17:43I lived in New York.
17:44I remember going to Madison Square Garden once a month.
17:48Bruno Sammartino, Ivan Putzky, Gorilla Monsoon, George the Animal Steel.
17:53I can go on.
17:54I enjoyed it.
17:55I loved it.
17:56It's a core element of my childhood.
17:57I joined Turner Broadcasting in 1993.
18:00My responsibility was to come on board and head up a unit called Turner Home Entertainment.
18:06And then I left, did a few other things, including becoming the President and Chief Operating Officer of WWF Entertainment.
18:15The first thing I was looking to do was to keep growing the core business, to look for new opportunities for the company.
18:22I continued to read about what was happening at WCW.
18:25I kept reading about the behind-the-scenes angst going on there.
18:29The ratings weren't improving.
18:31What's going to happen here?
18:32Are they going to stick with this?
18:33Are they not going to stick with it?
18:35And what I recall is picking up the phone and calling Brad and, you know, just checking in, first of all, because we've known each other for a long, long time.
18:44Keep reading about this stuff.
18:46Are you okay?
18:47And, you know, he'd share with me some of the angst he was going through.
18:50I may have said something to the effect of, hey, look, if there's ever a reason to have a conversation, I think we might be interested.
18:57We were aware that there was another player.
19:00It didn't factor into anything.
19:02I didn't know their deal.
19:03I didn't know what they were offering.
19:05They knew nothing.
19:06Internally at WWF, we had made a decision and thought if we could do a transaction to acquire WCW, we were going to work really hard to get that done.
19:17On Friday, March 23rd, the WWF announces the unthinkable that it has purchased its competition, WCW.
19:26On March 26th, 2001, the final episode of WCW Nitro is broadcast live from Panama City Beach, Florida.
19:40What is this?
19:41Oh, what is this for?
19:42We're doing a little documentary on the last two days of Nitro.
19:44The last two days of Unamal.
19:45I remember.
19:46I remember.
19:47I remember.
19:48Believe what you ought to believe.
19:50Believe what you ought to believe.
19:53But don't even know.
19:55Family happened separately on the road system.
19:58The overwhelm is after the clock.
19:59Legally, it'sconfidence close.
20:00You know I think that's what's going on, and when that's going on tonight's not going
20:02a healing narcissist, where is this for us?
20:03We've been asking you last week a week and a week entraged you tonight.
20:05Let's go.
20:06To picture, give us some reels.
20:07Get the fuck out of here.
20:08Do you know anything about what's going on tonight?
20:09Brother, I have the format right here in my back pocket.
20:10Holy shit.
20:11What is that all about?
20:12Columbia, Frank� ì •ë¶€, Scottie.
20:13Lamar publia, City of Florida, Vince McMahon, Vignette.
20:18Wow.
20:19That's big-time, Brother.
20:20Here we go.
20:21We had Vince McMahon starting the show on camera.
20:31It's hard to overstate just how shocking that was at the time.
20:35Imagine that.
20:38Me, Vince McMahon.
20:41Imagine that.
20:43Here I am on WCW television.
20:47How can that happen?
20:50Well, there's only one way.
20:52You see, it was just a matter of time before I, Vince McMahon, bought my competition.
21:00That's right.
21:02I own WCW.
21:05Therefore, in its final broadcast tonight on TNT, I have the opportunity to address
21:13what is the fate of WCW?
21:17Because the fate, the very fate of WCW is in my hands.
21:29We thought we were coming to work like a regular day, and no one knew until that night.
21:34No one knew.
21:36We saw Vince come up on the trot.
21:39No matter how you look at it at that point, no matter how it spread, they win the war.
21:45When WWE acquired WCW, it felt like the end of an era.
21:51It sucked.
21:52The 800-pound gorilla of the room had won.
21:55Had no idea what Vince would do with it.
21:57I didn't know if it was more advantageous for him to buy it and keep it afloat, and then have the competition, or destroy it.
22:08So the fear of the unknown is pretty heavy.
22:11There was a lot of sadness and a lot of uncertainty who they were going to hire, who they were going to cut.
22:18We don't really know what's going on.
22:20People are happy and sad at the same time.
22:22They don't know why.
22:23I don't think you want my real feelings about it, because they ain't pretty.
22:27It was very emotional.
22:29I remember Dusty was there, so I was sticking pretty close to him.
22:33There were WWF signs up, which was really weird.
22:37You know, because there's always signs like on the dressing room doors, you know, wherever, and you were seeing WWF.
22:42I mean, it felt like a slap.
22:44I remember Shane McMahon coming in, and he had like a little brief meeting with everybody.
22:49And we get told the company's been sold to the WWE.
22:52And tonight, everybody's going to find out about it.
22:55And a lot of guys were like, oh, my God.
22:58As I was seeing, you know, the wrestlers and performers backstage, you know, shoulders might have been slumped before they walked through the curtain.
23:06But then when they walked through, it's back to business as normal.
23:09And then when they came back after their match or segment or whatever, it's back to what's going on, what's going to happen.
23:16Let's not lose sight of the fact this is the last Nitro on the Turner Networks, and we're going out with the bang.
23:22Scott Steiner and I, we had a conversation, and Scott goes, you know, what do you think you're going to do, man?
23:27What do you think you're going to do?
23:28And I look at Scott, and I go, bro, we was auditioning that night.
23:33But Booker T in the cover!
23:34Dale goes away!
23:35The all-blaster!
23:36Yes, here it is!
23:37And he nailed it!
23:38Everyone was working that night, so we went out and we rocked it.
23:41He's got it!
23:42Oh, God!
23:43Here it is!
23:44The one, two, gonna be it!
23:46Yes!
23:47Yes!
23:48Booker T!
23:49I didn't know I was gonna win the world title that night.
23:51But then when I did find that out, I go, oh, yeah, man, I got a chip in the game.
23:56They got eyes on me.
23:58You know, so I was really excited.
24:01I was probably perhaps one of the only guys that was excited, though.
24:06I mean, it was sad, you know?
24:09It wasn't even sad, it was pathetic.
24:12Why?
24:13Because fucking people actually showed up.
24:15Hey!
24:16You guys want to be on the Titanic?
24:19Nah.
24:20Good.
24:21I'll sit and watch the fucking thing sink from my fucking house.
24:27I didn't watch it as it happened live.
24:29I feel bad for the talent that were there.
24:31I feel bad for the production staff that were there that didn't see it coming,
24:34had no idea what their futures were going to be.
24:37It's a big life change.
24:38But as far as the brand itself, I walked away from it.
24:43I no longer cared.
24:44It's gonna be an emotional thing.
24:46You see a lot of production guys, a lot of people with cameras taking pictures of the guys.
24:49And to me, I look at it as the day you left college and guys you might not see again.
24:55But this is a tight-knit group of guys we have.
24:58It's like one of the camera guys and one of the sweetheart guy.
25:01He'd been working for the company for 27 years.
25:04All of those people lost their livelihood.
25:09And that's why I say fuck you, Jamie Kilner.
25:12I was concerned about a lot of people that just couldn't walk into a job so easily.
25:17Our jobs are so different.
25:19It's not a factory.
25:20We don't do the same thing every day.
25:22We're a combination of a circus and an army.
25:25And to get that good at it, we had to have the right people in the right places.
25:29And the way you got to that point was the trust of one another.
25:34Then now you can't do it together anymore.
25:47Everybody was in a bad space.
25:49You know, a lot of them didn't know what they were going to do.
25:51But there is a time, you know, you got to, you know, you got to let it go.
25:55But in this business, it's a little bit different.
25:59What was really weird to me, this multimillion dollar company was sold to WWE for like nothing.
26:07I'm not saying that there was anything spooky kooky going on there.
26:11But I have my suspicions.
26:13When you think about the final purchase price, we're talking about a company that at its peak was generating in the neighborhood of $200 million a year.
26:40And a huge part of pop culture that gets sold for a little over $4 million.
26:46I always thought that when I heard the price of what they paid for WCW was an inside job of some sort.
26:53Somebody filled their pockets by making a deal for it cheaply as it was.
26:57Maybe there's an envelope pushed across the desk.
27:01Maybe you got influence with the guy that's selling it.
27:05Look, there's some murky circumstances.
27:08Stu Snyder was an executive at Turner Broadcasting.
27:11Oh, by the way, Stu Snyder, after the fact, just happens to land a plum executive role with WWE.
27:17Oh my God, that's Bob Ryder!
27:20That's Bob Ryder from WCW.com!
27:23Bob, run! Run!
27:25Bob Ryder, he was one of the hosts on shows that were broadcast over WCW.com.
27:31So in the summer following the sale of WCW being purchased by the WWF, Bob Ryder puts out a widely disseminated post online, essentially alleging that there had been a conspiracy at play.
27:44Bob Ryder, he was a good man and a good friend.
27:47And I know that Bob had written about a theory that Brad Siegel helped facilitate the actual sale to WWE by convincing Jamie Kellner to take the distribution of programming out of the deal.
28:03Bob's theory was, Brad Siegel really didn't want WCW as a part of the Turner portfolio, and this was Brad Siegel's way of using Jamie Kellner to kill the deal.
28:14The conspiracy theory was really something like out of a wrestling storyline, essentially.
28:20There was a plot initiated by Brad Siegel and Stu Snyder to clear the path for it to have a quick sale to the WWF.
28:29Stu Snyder at that time was the president of the WWF, he had previously worked at Turner Broadcasting, had a relationship with Brad Siegel.
28:36And so the allegation was that there were covert talks between the two, and the primary piece of evidence was the fact that WCW was sold for 4.3 million bucks.
28:47I don't know that that's true. It is a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, there are enough questions and questionable relationships that lend interest in a conspiracy like that.
29:00Because you were friends with Stu Snyder, it was a way to ensure the WWF would have an advantage to the sale.
29:06No. Well, first of all, it was, I mean, we'd known each other our entire careers.
29:13I mean, the fact that Stu Snyder was running WWE and was a likely buyer for WCW is purely coincidence.
29:24Did you have any advanced knowledge that the QCN deal was going to fall through?
29:29No. It's as simple as that.
29:33My understanding is that Brad reported up to Jamie Kellner and that Jamie made the decision to say, I don't want it on our area and canceled it.
29:43If you think about how serious these particular allegations are and the fact that they would lead to potential SEC violations and have serious professional and personal consequences for all people involved,
29:55it's quite the audacious plot given the high profile nature of the people that we're talking about and what they stood to lose if eventually they would be convicted essentially of corporate espionage.
30:08I'm not saying I'm 100% convinced that Stu Snyder was part of an orchestration to make sure WCW got sold for nickels on the dollar.
30:19I'm not suggesting that I know that.
30:21I just lean in that direction because I don't believe in the number of coincidences that surround this entire situation.
30:28I'm just not buying it.
30:29I understand gossip. I understand rumor.
30:34But it's easy to sit on the sidelines and not really understand the economics of the businesses to say what something is worth.
30:42If there was a deal out there worth $60 million, I can guarantee you as I'm sitting here today, the Turner executives would have made a deal.
30:51We wanted to sell it. When we sold it, that's what it was worth.
30:55My regret is that when the ratings started to plummet, we could not find the right story, the right players in that story to turn it around.
31:07You know, that's a big regret of mine. We weren't successful. Sometimes that happens. You can't always be successful.
31:14I feel a responsibility for it because I clearly was not the person to do it.
31:20I didn't know the business and the story well enough to write it myself. I'm not a writer.
31:27So, yeah, I'm really sad about that and regret it wasn't a different outcome.
31:32Could anything have been done to save WCW?
31:35In my opinion, without a strong advocate who really believed in the business, it would have been tough to exist there with everything else of their challenges as a company.
31:49But that world had passed. Ted was that person who was its chief advocate in the new AOL Time Warner without that person.
31:58I don't know how it succeeds there. And for good or for worse, the one thing that all the talent knew, they knew where the buck stopped at WWF.
32:07It was Vince. You were either in line or you were out. That's how Vince ran that place. That place was a different story, a different time, different era.
32:16So unless you had somebody like that who could go, this is the way it's going to run and I have the support of corporate to leave it alone and let me do my thing, I think it would have been challenging.
32:27It's been proven that it was challenging.
32:37Let me be clear. We weren't looking at all to buy something and kill it. This brand is still good. It's still relevant to an audience. We're going to figure out how do we keep it alive and maybe over time it comes back as a separate show.
32:55In my head, I saw this great rivalry that was under one roof. First of all, it all started with the famous Shane McMahon showing up on WCW on Nitro and proclaiming the storyline of basically Vince was going to buy WCW, but he snagged it out from it.
33:16That's right. I now own WCW.
33:22I remember sitting down in my hotel room and writing down all the wrestlers who I had hoped to wrestle. Goldberg, Sting, Savage, everybody in the NWO.
33:31It's like I remember writing everybody down and going to Vince and saying, hey, this might be a good idea. What about this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy? Let's bring them in.
33:39There was so much speculation as to how it would all work. What people don't realize is that when WWE acquired WCW, the assets of WCW, the contracts weren't really part of the equation.
33:51It wasn't like all of the talent that was under contract automatically came to WWF, at least not the big names that mattered. Some of those people had quite a bit of time left under contracts and they were going to get paid anyway.
34:04I knew that at the time guys were getting 50 cents on the dollar on their existing contracts and that was not happening with me. I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to do it. So if I had to sit out for three years, I sat out for three years.
34:16Not everybody wanted to go to work for WWE. You didn't have Sting. You didn't have Lex Luger. You didn't have Goldberg. What do you really have?
34:25I stayed at like over a year left on my contract. They offered me a 50% buyout and go to work or just, you know, sit at home for the next year. I said, nah, man. I said, you know, out of sight, out of mind, you know.
34:40I remember Ric Flair saying a long time ago, time off is your worst enemy. You know, so I was like, let's get, take the 50% buyout and let's go to work.
34:49Wait a minute! What the hell?
34:53Back then it was a test. Let's throw these guys out here and see how good they really are compared to the WWE guys.
35:08Shane and I decided to join forces.
35:11The invasion storyline was supposed to be the best that WCW had to offer versus the best that WWE had to offer.
35:20But we were in the shape to actually be able to really, really pull off an invasion angle just because we did not have enough star power to really, really get that thing off the ground.
35:31They never really did a WCW, WWE feud correctly. And I think that was a big mistake by Vince McMahon.
35:38I think he could have done some really cool match-ups and some really cool things.
35:43Hey, yo.
35:48They were going to write the history that they wanted to create. And no matter how you looked at it, we were the Confederate soldiers going to work for the Union.
35:57And if you thought that you were going to go over one of their top guys, bullshit.
36:02They brought us in under the guise of, this isn't going to work twice.
36:08I looked at Scott. I said, we're gone. We're done. We're dead.
36:11I get to have the wonderful experience to watch my friend who now has been sober for 11 months go downstairs and just start pounding drinks.
36:24And he's like, fuck it. You talking about a miserable day in my life?
36:31The way they said, WCW? There was no room in New York City for a company like WCW.
36:39That's just the way I felt about it. When the WWE won the war, not only did they want to win the war, but they wanted to bury the opposition and they wanted to plant the flag.
36:50And that's what they needed to do more than anything to really solidify winning that war, planting that flag.
36:59Yeah, they had to be in a dominant position to do that.
37:04We're back live here, ladies and gentlemen. This crowd is still buzzing.
37:08Well, here comes Mr. McMahon back, who promised to name the new general manager of RAW.
37:14In 2002, Vince McMahon called me. And while Vince was speaking, I had already made up my mind that this is my opportunity.
37:22Allow me to introduce you to the new general manager of RAW. His name is Eric Bishop.
37:31I'm not gonna say that everybody in WWE was happy to see me show up, but the people that mattered could not have made me feel more at home.
37:40I like Eric a lot. We're good buddies. Known him for a very long time. And he has his bust on the Mount Rushmore of professional wrestling executives.
37:49Everything that went wrong, the fusion sale falling through, the fact that the narrative is Eric Bischoff greater WCW.
37:58I had an opportunity to write the last chapter of my story.
38:02Wait a minute. What? What the hell is going on? What is this?
38:07You know, I had been with WWE for a few years as that general manager character and everything was going great.
38:12And I remember getting a phone call from Stephanie McMahon, who was head of creative at that point.
38:16She goes, Eric, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. You've done a great job, but we're gonna go in a different direction.
38:21Erica Bischoff has abused his power for too long.
38:26John Cena was going to hit me with his finish and then drag me out of the ring and John Cena was gonna throw me in the back of a garbage truck and I was gonna be hauled out of the arena.
38:35And I very seldom questioned creative.
38:39But I went to Vince and said, it doesn't make any sense for John Cena to do it.
38:43It makes more sense for you to do it.
38:45And I thought, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna have fun doing it.
38:48I'm gonna make this fun for me.
38:50And I did. And I had a blast.
38:52And I got to live a dream and rewrite my own chapter.
38:55And I loved it. Every minute of it.
38:57There's not a second of it that I regret.
38:59Who killed WCW?
39:09Ooh.
39:11Who killed WCW?
39:14I think it was Turner Corporate.
39:17And some of the people within the booking committees.
39:20AOL, Time Warner, the executives that were embarrassed by Goofy Wrestling.
39:26The guys in Turner that didn't want us and didn't like us.
39:30And the top guys not letting the mid-card guys interact with them.
39:35WCW killed itself.
39:38The cast of characters that was WCW killed WCW.
39:43It didn't function as a team any longer.
39:46It functioned as a bunch of self-seeking individuals.
39:49I've never seen anybody that was that high up in the food chain take less responsibility.
39:58This is what killed WCW.
40:00They were fighting within themselves.
40:02They were eating their own.
40:03The wolves.
40:04Who killed WCW?
40:06That's easy.
40:07Turner Sports.
40:08It would have to be the person with the checkbook.
40:10It would have to be Eric Bischoff.
40:12Vince Russo, Eric Bischoff, two guys that had zero knowledge about how to run wrestling.
40:19And they put themselves in a position to tell people like me what to do.
40:24And that's what killed WCW.
40:27As a matter of fact, I'm gonna give myself a round of applause for that.
40:32Yes, thank you.
40:33Bro, they took such a drop from where they were to where it was when it was sold and so
40:40much money lost.
40:42I don't think anybody could have done anything.
40:45So I would say a business decision killed WCW.
40:49I don't think one person could have killed WCW by any stretch of imagination.
40:53There were a shitload of people who contributed to its downfall.
40:56I think it's a collection of factors, a number of reasons that explain its demise.
41:01There's plenty of blame to go around.
41:03But I think ultimately it was inevitable that it was going to fall apart.
41:08A good buddy of mine, he's one of my best friends, downtown Bruno.
41:12When I first started, I said, Bruno, give me some advice.
41:15He said, you're gonna hear a voice one day.
41:18And that voice is gonna say, go on home, the big run's over.
41:23WCW as an entity, they heard that voice.
41:26And the big run was over and it was fucking awesome.
41:30Wow, man, what a run.
41:35It was always about the performances for me.
41:37It was always about the fans.
41:39We were rock stars.
41:42Everywhere we went, it was packed.
41:45The whole WCW experience was a hell of a ride, period.
41:51Let us remember the lessons.
41:54Learned and strived to build a fairer and more equitable future for wrestling.
41:59We've done over 350 or 60-some-odd nitros.
42:03And a lot of these people are like family to me.
42:05It was a good ride.
42:06It was fun.
42:07You were like a big family, even though you're a dysfunctional family.
42:10You may not get along with everybody, but you're still gonna be there when it comes to it.
42:14It was the greatest job.
42:16They let us be as creative as we wanted to be.
42:19The first time I realized WCW was big was my very first show when I debuted.
42:25There was a palpable energy.
42:27You could feel the crowd.
42:29There's something special and something different about a wrestling fan.
42:34It just blew my mind to see what a big deal WCW really was.
42:40He's got him up!
42:41Those are some great times.
42:43Terrific times.
42:44And it came to an abrupt end like that.
42:46But, hey man, all good things come to an end.
42:52I still think that, you know, when it comes down to it, WCW is Eric's creation.
42:56Any success they had was with Eric.
42:59There's nobody on this planet that can look in the mirror and say,
43:03I beat Vince McMahon at professional wrestling for 83 weeks.
43:10It's a pretty fucking huge accomplishment.
43:17Cool.
43:20Time fucks with your head, you know?
43:22It becomes distorted.
43:24My memory is more like a series of photographs.
43:29There's bits and pieces and moments that stand out in my mind.
43:33But as time goes on, they kind of just all blur together.
43:37When I look back at my time during WCW, the journey, the ups, the downs, the ride all along the way was a rush.
43:44We were the number one wrestling company on television in the world.
43:47Very proud of that.
43:48I was able to experience and achieve things that nobody thought possible.
43:54And I wouldn't have had any of this if it wasn't professional wrestling.
43:57So I'm grateful for every minute of it.
43:59The good, the bad, everything in between.
44:02Very lucky.
44:03Very lucky.
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