0:02

Welcome to something

0:07

that's not a real

0:14

there's no box of

0:16

gimmicks I

0:21

don't deal in rumor and inuennig

0:25

I was there I

0:32

don't give a shit I

0:39

ain't scared of shit I'm

0:47

scared of shit I'm

0:51

not scared of something to

0:56

wrestle with and

1:02

unfortunately we didn't get to record last

1:04

weekend talking to a main man and he was feeling a

1:06

little better and

1:09

thought he could

1:11

record turns out that nerve block

1:13

wears off and

1:18

I think most of you know that Bruce

1:20

had a torn shoulder he had two

1:22

frozen shoulders and

1:29

about ten months ago he had one repaired and

1:32

it was kind of a breeze, he only had one incision

1:34

point and he was in and out and good to go

1:37

the second one was much worse, completely

1:39

shredded was the term they used

1:42

not one incision point, not two, not

1:44

three, but four and

1:46

my man has been hurting for certain, he's wearing

1:48

a large apparatus that he can't even put on

1:50

by himself, he's got to have some help putting

1:52

it on he's just uncomfortable

1:55

and if you've been watching along with us on YouTube

1:57

for the past several weeks you've seen him trying to

1:59

navigate that and

2:01

just on the other side of that, of course,

2:03

what it feels like we're making

2:06

a little progress. He

2:08

fell and when

2:10

he fell, he caught himself and

2:13

not with both hands, but with one. And

2:15

that was too much too

2:17

soon, too, too much stress. Bam.

2:20

There went the tricep right off the

2:22

bone. So he had

2:24

to get it reattached in two different places and

2:27

the doctor gave him a heads up, Hey, this

2:29

is going to suck. This is going

2:31

to hurt real bad. And

2:33

of course, Bruce had just been through the shoulder thing and he

2:35

thought, well, how bad can it be? Well,

2:37

it is a double whammy. And my

2:40

man is hurting for certain and unfortunately

2:42

has not been feeling

2:44

himself. It's hard to get

2:46

comfortable. It's hard to rest. It's hard to sleep. And

2:49

he's just in constant pain. He says it feels

2:51

like a 300 pound

2:54

weight hanging on by a thread.

2:57

And, uh, he just cannot, um,

3:00

function the way he normally would.

3:02

So terrible quality of life for my man,

3:04

Bruce, throw up some thoughts and prayers. Man,

3:07

it's, it's, uh, it's pretty wild that we've got not

3:10

one, but two of my guys down for the count.

3:12

If you haven't already, let me give you a quick

3:15

update on Jr. Uh, my

3:17

man had a hip surgery and

3:19

then they went back in for the Tibia, that

3:21

bad spot. He's had on his leg. He's been battling

3:23

that cancer for a few years. He's

3:26

been laid up in the hospital for, I

3:28

don't know, over 10 days now. So

3:30

man, my crew, man, we're, uh, we're out

3:32

of warranty. We need some thoughts and prayers,

3:35

send some good vibes to both, uh, Bruce

3:37

Pritchard and Jr. And thank you

3:39

guys for supporting us. I realized that, man,

3:41

we were on a pretty good little run there

3:43

with Bruce about getting episodes out on time. And

3:46

man, we just, we thought we could record on

3:48

Saturday and we'd be back to normal. Well,

3:51

that was maybe a little overzealous. He,

3:53

uh, he couldn't pull that together. So

3:56

As Eric would say, we endeavor to persevere..

3:58

We are hoping to record. This weekend.

4:01

And. Then knock on wood. Hopefully.

4:04

Get back on our regularly scheduled programing

4:06

and where are back on time on a

4:08

regular basis again? It's going to

4:10

get these guys. Well, Speaking. Oil.

4:13

Well. Ah debris to be

4:15

as a have little controversy this year

4:18

A and certainly. There. Was

4:20

some controversy about thirty years ago way back

4:22

in the fall, and Ninety Three will call

4:24

it October, specifically. Boy, that was a tough

4:27

time for the debris to be f I

4:29

think that's probably an understatement. He. Had

4:31

Vincent Man and Titan Sports facing

4:33

serious charges from the Federal government.

4:36

And. Of course, there was a threat

4:38

that. There. Would be millions of

4:40

dollars in fines and maybe even

4:43

the Federal government taking Titan Towers.

4:45

And everything in it. Or. Hogan

4:48

is gone. So. The got

4:50

Randy Savage back in the rain, but before they

4:52

do, Savage. Goes on Jay or

4:54

his radio show A calls have Hogan out

4:57

for lying on the Arsenio Hall show. Fences.

5:00

Now decided to were shift gears to a

5:02

different type of main of an attraction. To

5:04

feature Bret Hart in a feed with Jerry

5:06

Lawler. A man, it's the hottest

5:08

in the company. And. Then Lawler

5:11

got arrested. So. Despite business

5:13

big down. They sell

5:15

out the boss the gardens in record

5:18

time. How does that happen? Bruce.

5:20

Explains a new strategy that work to

5:22

move tickets and how they try to

5:25

pivot away from Lawler in the main

5:27

of if why was shown chosen. Who.

5:29

Were the knights supposed to be.

5:32

Our. The other Heart Brothers to work

5:34

with. What? Was the original plan

5:36

before it was bread and no one.

5:38

Plus. We have sidebars about lewd big

5:41

mortgage rates, homes, and of course the

5:43

creation of one of our most requested

5:45

things. Rio. Rodgers.

5:48

Don't. Miss the show that Bruce wanted

5:50

to cover since we first started the

5:52

podcast Survivor Series Nineteen Ninety Three. or

5:54

bring him as he today and were

5:56

Bring you a heads up. That.

5:59

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where your beard takes center stage.

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Now without further ado, let's talk about

7:52

Survivor Series 1993. Maybe

7:56

the last time WWE had

7:58

some, uh... challenges, shall we

8:01

say? Let's see what

8:03

there is to learn and draw maybe

8:05

some more modern conclusions today. Right

8:07

here on Something to Wrestle with Bruce

8:10

Prichard. Welcome

8:13

to Something to Wrestle

8:15

with Bruce Prichard. Well,

8:22

you have not

8:24

even seen the truth. There's

8:29

no box of gimmicks. No

8:32

deal in rumor and in you and

8:34

it fits. See there, I was there.

8:38

I don't give a shit. I

8:43

kill. I live. Double

8:48

cheeseburger. Double

8:50

cheese. Double

8:52

mayo. Double

8:55

onion, my boy. Hey, it's

8:58

Conrad Thompson and you're listening to Something

9:00

to Wrestle with. Bruce

9:08

Prichard, damn it. Okay, Bruce Prichard, damn

9:10

it. I like that. Can we make that the

9:12

new name of the show? Bruce Prichard, damn it.

9:15

Damn it. I like the damn it in there.

9:17

Well, I don't know why you're damning it. You

9:19

had a good Thanksgiving yesterday and today we're back

9:21

to our regularly scheduled programming. Hopefully

9:23

last night you enjoyed. You were new.

9:25

I guess it's your second annual Thanksgiving

9:28

tradition. A Survivor Series watch along from

9:30

1988. If you

9:32

haven't already, check it out in the

9:35

archives at somethingtoresult.com. But man, I'm excited.

9:37

We get to cover a topic that

9:39

I've been looking forward to covering from the

9:41

beginning, Survivor Series 1993. Well,

9:46

you know, it was a strange year. There was

9:48

a lot of shit going on. And

9:50

as we get into this, it felt

9:52

like a lot of things that we

9:54

have covered before individually, but not ever

9:56

together at the same time and how

9:58

all the gaga. and the bullshit

10:01

going on in the wrestling business and

10:03

particularly with us in

10:05

Titan Sports at the time, how

10:07

it affected everything. And

10:10

one show really getting affected bad. Well,

10:13

I'm really excited about this one because when you and

10:15

I first talked about doing a podcast,

10:18

I said, what do you think would be the

10:21

best episodes? And I had some opinions of what

10:23

I wanted to hear as a fan, but

10:26

you kept coming back to man, Survivor

10:28

Series 93. What

10:30

a story. Nobody knows the whole story. And

10:34

you and I did what we would call

10:36

a practice episode, you know, a demo of

10:38

sorts. And we wanted to just sort

10:41

of have a dry run. You and

10:43

I talking through wrestling topics and get

10:45

our timing down and get familiar with one

10:47

another, et cetera, et cetera. And

10:50

we never aired it. And

10:52

I'm not even sure that either one of us

10:54

still have a copy of it, but it was

10:56

certainly good practice. And now over

10:59

two years later, nearly two and

11:01

a half years later, we're finally sitting

11:03

down to talk about Survivor Series, 1993.

11:07

This went down 25 years ago,

11:09

man, November 24th, 1993 at the Boston garden right there

11:13

in Boston, Massachusetts. And

11:16

even as a little kid, I knew that Boston was

11:18

a big town for the WWF. We

11:21

know that New York is the home

11:23

market. Where does Boston fall? Number two,

11:25

number three, number four, not saying now,

11:28

but I'm saying when you came into the company, say

11:30

87. I'd say

11:32

it was, it was Madison square garden.

11:34

Then it was long Island, Nassau County,

11:37

Coliseum, Boston, and Philadelphia. And

11:39

then, then he go to Baltimore and

11:41

so on and so forth. But those

11:43

were the, those were the

11:45

top spots and Boston, because it also

11:47

had the new England sports network that

11:50

we did television out of there. And we use

11:52

the tapings out of Boston for

11:54

prime time wrestling and all American and

11:57

things like that. So it

11:59

was, yeah, it was. New York, both, both

12:01

buildings in New York, Long Island and

12:03

Madison Square Garden, and then Boston and

12:06

Philadelphia. Those were the top four. They're

12:08

Baltimore in there for the top five

12:11

and Meadowlands, uh,

12:13

were the main, the, those were

12:15

the big, those were the big events in the

12:17

Northeast. Well, this

12:19

is a big event here. You've got $180,000 in ticket sales.

12:24

Uh, attendance for the event is 15,509 fans. Now

12:29

that sounds really strong to me, but

12:32

I found in my research, this is actually the

12:34

lowest attendance for a survivor series since 1989, uh,

12:36

the paper view by

12:39

Ray is also down, it's only a 0.82 down from a

12:42

1.4 the prior year. So

12:45

it fell off a cliff and

12:47

it was a million by short of

12:49

what survivor series did two years prior

12:52

in 1991, so you can

12:54

start to see the decline

12:56

in business. Uh, survivor

12:58

series 93 is the first WWF

13:00

paper view ever to have a

13:02

buy rate under a

13:04

one in history. So

13:07

the show on pay-per-view did a

13:09

$2 million gross roughly. Bruce,

13:11

you've been with the company. You know, you came on when they

13:13

were hotter than ever in 87, uh, 88 was what it

13:17

was 89 is the hottest year ever.

13:21

90, you tried some new things with warrior business

13:23

dipped a little bit. 91, it comes down quite

13:25

a bit. 92

13:28

more of the same, but 93, it feels like, Oh

13:30

no. Is

13:34

that fair to say internally inside the office?

13:37

I don't know that it was,

13:39

Oh no, it was certainly, Oh

13:42

no, it's not Lex because we

13:44

were in a period of Vince

13:46

really trying to have

13:50

that replacement for Hulk Hogan. He was, he was

13:52

looking for, you know, so many years and we

13:54

did things. What would you do if it were

13:57

Hulk and Lex Luger was

13:59

the anointed one. The from. Especially

14:01

during this time of goddamn at

14:03

ease. The guy. And.

14:06

He just wasn't living up to

14:08

the potential. He wasn't drawing people,

14:11

They worked. Clamoring.

14:13

To see more of Lex Luger, they weren't

14:15

cheering him and goal banana when he came

14:17

out. So. It was.

14:20

Vince. Want.

14:22

A bag got I'll show you

14:24

n we kept pushing lax and

14:26

in. This was about the time

14:28

though. Where.

14:31

The. Doubt You know. The doubt started to

14:34

come in. Because we we did

14:36

Summer slam. Him. That

14:38

was what it was with. Vince wasn't ready

14:40

to put the championship on him and. Now

14:45

we're We're said The gone boy. He didn't.

14:48

Didn't. Come out of that well

14:50

and. I. Don't know. This is

14:52

the guy. So. There

14:54

were doubts. Zoo.

14:57

I mean obviously lean times

14:59

are ahead for the company. You.

15:02

Know when you first come on, you

15:04

guys are selling out arenas. fan. You

15:07

know, and almost feels like he had run stadiums

15:09

a different times. And and he certainly. Thought.

15:12

About it with Wrestlemania seven. Of

15:14

couple years removed from that. Ah,

15:17

May be you're not quite yet. Running.

15:20

High school gymnasiums, but that's not too

15:22

far away. Did.

15:24

You start to get. A

15:26

little nervous or is this business as usual for

15:28

you not for the company from birth pressure. And

15:32

a It was business as usual for me

15:34

because I was in it and I was.

15:36

I was. d. In it And

15:38

also I understood the limitations In the

15:41

limitations worth. Vince did not want to

15:43

bring on a lot of new talent

15:45

because of the impending trial. Vince did

15:48

not feel that it was spared the

15:50

talent to say. Gonna. Bring

15:52

you and I don't know what's gonna

15:54

happen. With. The

15:56

outcome of this. United.

15:58

States effect. Government Trial.

16:01

Ah, I'm. So. We

16:03

were. Told. Here's

16:05

the players you have. Here's what you

16:07

have: Make it work. And.

16:11

Every. Once in a while we might be

16:13

able to bring somebody and who who understood

16:15

that was really ready to come in. But.

16:18

Those were few and far between. We didn't

16:20

have the latitude, just go out and hire

16:23

people. If. You

16:25

hire someone knew that was. Took.

16:28

A lot took a lot of time. And

16:31

in costs money that we just didn't really

16:33

have to spend time. it was. Every dollar

16:36

had to be countered for. Some

16:40

else are imported, and the October

16:42

eleventh observer the World Wrestling Federation

16:44

Survivor Series in November Twenty Fourth

16:46

of the Boston Garden may have

16:48

achieved the fastest majoring a sell

16:50

in North American Pro Wrestling history.

16:52

Tickets. For the card, the first pay for

16:54

V show ever in Boston area and the

16:56

final pro wrestling event at the sixteen thousand

16:58

C Boston Garden. Or all sold

17:01

out with the exception of a few

17:03

badly obstructed obstructed view seats about ninety

17:05

minutes after they were put on sales

17:07

of the public at Eleven Am on

17:09

October first. The. Have was sold

17:11

out before any of the ashes were officially

17:13

announced. And. Part of the reason for

17:15

the fast sell out was that the presale

17:17

tickets stemming from a mailing the Wtf sent

17:19

people on a mailing list which are largely

17:21

magazine subscribers and others who send in any

17:23

kind of letter. Top. Eight thousand.

17:26

Perhaps. The successful bring back mailing

17:28

last as a tool and promoting shows.

17:31

So. Before we talk about the mailing last. It.

17:33

Is interesting that. The.

17:36

Bar rate is down. And.

17:38

Tendencies lower but then he see it sold

17:40

out so fast and era last fall attendance

17:42

has lower because it was a smaller building.

17:44

And. That's true I am. clearly when

17:47

you're selling out your tickets and ninety minutes.

17:50

That. He could have sold more. A easiest

17:52

I didn't have the ability to get

17:54

have the capacity for it. But.

17:56

this is the last major

17:58

show ads The

18:00

Boston garden you worked

18:03

that building a lot Chat

18:05

me up your favorite Boston

18:07

garden memories a Favorite

18:10

Boston garden memory was referring a match

18:12

between the Heart Foundation and the Rouge

18:14

O's people in

18:16

Boston used to freeze oranges and bring

18:20

them to throw with the the wrestlers and

18:23

So you get hit in the head with with

18:25

frozen fruit, but Jim

18:27

Nighthart was in a camel clutch and Raymond

18:30

Rouge, oh had him in the camel clutch and my

18:32

nose is I'm nose to nose of Jim Nighthart on

18:34

the mat and Nighthart

18:36

says move and

18:39

I leaned back basically

18:41

just scooted back on the mat in

18:44

a ice pick That

18:47

had been thrown from somewhere Nighthart caught it

18:49

out of the corner of his eye Stuck

18:52

right in the ring right in between us

18:54

had I been there definitely would have hit

18:56

me So a lot

18:58

of fond memories about Boston Gardens working

19:00

there in the summer The

19:02

walls would actually sweat it was

19:05

so fucking humid in there But

19:08

the atmosphere the that

19:10

audience Was magical, you

19:12

know, it was one of those magical

19:14

old wrestling buildings that you had to

19:16

work and you had the you had

19:18

to experience On the

19:20

bigger pockets real estate podcast co-host David

19:22

Green and Rob Abasolo interview real estate

19:25

investors and entrepreneurs About successes failures and

19:27

hard-earned lessons joined by author Dave Meyer

19:29

who wrote a book I did write

19:31

a book It seems like you're coming

19:33

out with a book every four minutes

19:35

you're one to talk you released two

19:37

books this year I've stood half as

19:39

many as you is more about strategy

19:42

than it is about just finding whatever

19:44

the new buzzword happens to be Bigger

19:46

pockets real estate podcast on YouTube or

19:48

wherever you listen Let's

19:50

talk about the mailing list here. You

19:52

know, we've mentioned this before briefly, but

19:55

you guys were Really utilizing this

19:57

a couple of years prior I

20:00

remember my mind being blown when you

20:02

revealed to me the real reason that

20:05

you guys did a letter writing campaign

20:07

after earthquake squashed Hulk Hogan. You

20:10

had tugboat go on TV and say, Hey,

20:12

send your get well wishes to

20:14

Hulk Hogan. And it wasn't

20:16

until we started doing this that I realized what

20:19

an idiot I was. I thought that was just to

20:22

give kids something fun to do to write

20:24

to their hero. Nope. You were building a

20:27

mailing list genius. And

20:29

it was something good for kids to do by

20:31

God. Sure. Write a letter. Come on. See, it

20:33

was all, I wrote one. I mean, come on.

20:35

I needed the Hulkster to come back. It was,

20:37

it was such a great angle for me, but

20:40

I never even considered, Hey, there is a

20:42

business strategy here. They're building a mailing list.

20:45

And, you know, back in the day, that's what a

20:47

lot of people did. I remember ECW had a mailing

20:49

list and they would send you this

20:51

little paper catalog so you could pick some

20:53

of their home video releases and you guys

20:55

would send, you know, the merchandise catalogs

20:57

where Stephanie strutting that ass in a new

20:59

t-shirt or a new hat or whatever, but

21:02

here you're doing it. And this

21:04

is, you know, obviously been replaced by email to

21:07

let people know about tickets going on

21:09

sale. And apparently it was a huge

21:11

success. How often did

21:13

you guys use a mailing list for ticket sales?

21:15

Was this the first time or just the first

21:17

time it was on Dave's radar because it was

21:20

a major show? This

21:22

was the first time for one of the

21:24

big major events. We did it for all

21:26

of our events. However, we

21:28

orchestrated this for an on sale ticket

21:30

and allowing the people that were a

21:33

part of the mailing list that

21:35

they would have the first, they would have

21:37

the exclusive first pick

21:39

of the tickets, the

21:43

theory behind it. And what we were

21:45

trying to test was announcing

21:48

WrestleMania one year

21:50

in advance, the location and tickets

21:52

and everything in putting up, putting

21:54

tickets on sale for WrestleMania the

21:57

day after WrestleMania. For

22:00

the next WrestleMania, but

22:02

letting people know that well ahead of time

22:05

and that, Hey, here's, here's where we're going

22:07

to be. And here's what we're going to

22:09

do. You will be able to buy tickets

22:11

the day after WrestleMania. Um, all you gotta

22:14

do is, is go here. That

22:17

was, that was the internal

22:19

plan. This, this one worked and this

22:21

one was very successful. As you said,

22:23

it was like an hour or so

22:26

that we sold out tickets. Um,

22:29

with, with just the mailing list, that was

22:31

the only way we really informed people

22:33

how they could get tickets. So

22:37

that was the thing we wanted to try it

22:39

out for WrestleMania and the other big events for

22:41

pay-per-views. Were

22:43

you, uh, were you surprised at how well it worked?

22:48

A little bit because it was, it was

22:50

early on and no matches had been announced.

22:52

Nothing had been announced other than the survivor

22:54

series in Boston. That

22:56

was it. So that was encouraging that

23:00

we could announce here, we're going

23:02

to have an event, but by God, you know, uh,

23:05

don't have any matches, don't know who's going to

23:07

be there, but you can buy tickets now. And

23:09

they did, they had faith in the brand and

23:11

did it for whatever reason, even

23:14

though business is down in 93, there

23:16

are certain metrics you could look at. And

23:19

think, well, they're actually up a little bit. Let's

23:21

take a look at those. Your average attendance in

23:23

November of 92 was 2,840 fans a year later

23:25

in November of

23:28

93, it's 3,300 fans. So

23:31

attendance is up 13.9%. Your

23:34

average gate is up 7.7% going from 39,000 and change

23:36

to around 43,000 in 1993,

23:41

uh, and your ratings are

23:44

actually up just a little bit. You went from a 1.9 in

23:46

November of 92 now to a 2.1 in November of 93. Um,

23:57

what do you, how do you chalk this up? How

23:59

do you reconcile? this where it does

24:01

feel like you're getting some confusing information. Obviously,

24:04

we can sort of tip the hat to

24:06

the mailing list as that being a reason

24:08

that it was very successful for selling tickets

24:10

for this event. But

24:13

it does feel like business is on the

24:15

downturn. But when you look at a microcosm

24:17

of the numbers, do they

24:20

tell the true story or is it not

24:22

really painting the accurate picture of where business

24:24

is? No, it was telling

24:27

the true story. For me, it

24:29

felt like it had just maintained. There

24:31

wasn't a lot of growth. It

24:34

just was there was a sameness to it and

24:36

there was just

24:38

no growth. It didn't feel like the

24:41

audience was eroding. You

24:44

just weren't getting those pops.

24:48

You weren't getting the jumps. So

24:51

I don't

24:54

know. It felt like for

24:56

that year, it was

24:59

just the same. It was even keel. Let's

25:03

talk a little bit about what's going on

25:05

around the company. Macho

25:07

Man Randy Savage is still with

25:09

the WWF, but Hulk Hogan is

25:12

gone by this point. There

25:15

is a new program in town

25:17

called WWF radio or radio WWF

25:19

where good old Jr. It's

25:21

hosting the show. And we've talked about this

25:23

before. I believe it was on our WrestleMania

25:26

nine episode. Maybe

25:28

it was the macho man episode. I don't know. All

25:30

the episodes are available at something to wrestle.com. The

25:35

co-host for this radio show on this

25:37

particular day with Jr. It's Johnny Polo.

25:39

Who's going to go on to be

25:41

the future Raven. Both

25:43

of those guys have podcasts today. You should

25:45

check out the Raven effect. And of course

25:47

the Jim Ross report. But

25:49

he's doing a, um, an interview

25:52

here with Randy Savage and

25:54

Randy gets all over Hulk Hogan

25:58

and Meltzer says this isn't a work. Quote,

26:00

the most intriguing aspect of all this is that

26:02

Hogan was asked a few days earlier to appear

26:04

on the show, although never informed that Savage would

26:06

be on or what subject matter

26:08

was being planned for the show. Apparently

26:11

there was a well laid out plan

26:13

to ambush an unknowing Hogan with Savage's

26:15

comments in a public forum. Hogan,

26:18

who had done the same radio show two

26:20

weeks prior, apparently had a premonition, something was

26:22

up since it was awfully quick to

26:24

be asked back on to do a radio show

26:26

for a company he was no longer working for.

26:29

Or simply was busy and lucked into

26:31

not being in a potentially embarrassing position.

26:35

It should be noted. It was pretty obvious the way

26:37

Savage, Jim Ross and Johnny Polo were interacting during

26:39

the segment that all three knew what was about

26:41

to be said Ross before

26:43

bringing Savage on as a guest noted that he

26:45

would be saying things that you won't believe and

26:48

later made comments that some of the things he

26:50

would be saying, you will be reading about tomorrow

26:53

morning in the sports pages of your newspaper. Although

26:55

at press time, no newspaper had acknowledged the

26:57

interview, although I suspect the comments to make

27:00

the wrestling columns and the few newspapers that

27:02

have them, it's clear from

27:04

the television promotion of the show that Ross

27:06

is working very hard to garner

27:08

publicity for his radio vehicle. And

27:10

a few weeks back, Ross was able to get

27:12

the green light from Vince McWann to be more

27:14

controversial on the show and talk

27:16

about other promotions. So

27:18

before we talk about what Jr

27:20

and Randy Savage actually talked about.

27:23

Chat me up about why

27:26

this was a big deal to

27:29

Jr. What opportunity Vince thought it

27:31

represented and why McMann who

27:33

normally never acknowledged anybody. That's always

27:35

been his MO. When you're number

27:37

one, you don't acknowledge number two.

27:40

iPhone doesn't talk about Android. Chat

27:42

me up here. Why did

27:45

Vince okay this and what

27:47

was the value proposition for Vince

27:50

McMahon's WWF to have this

27:53

WWF radio show? There's

27:55

more exposure and Vince was looking to

27:58

try and create something. through

28:00

another medium and the

28:02

radio show was produced by a guy by

28:04

the name of Brad Saul who had the

28:07

radio network that we were on. Brad

28:09

Saul was the one who founded the

28:14

podcast.com or something, Web Talk Radio,

28:16

which is where I had my

28:19

very first podcast. Really

28:21

nice guy that ran

28:24

out of Chicago and Vince wanted a

28:26

radio show. He

28:28

wanted something else and also Jim Ross

28:31

had come from Atlanta with his radio

28:33

show. It was something more

28:35

for Jim to do. Let him

28:37

do radio, let him get out, let's have

28:39

a talk show and be controversial. Let us

28:41

be the ones to break the stories and

28:43

break the news versus the people

28:45

that didn't work within the business and were

28:48

just reporting the gossip and rumor. So

28:53

let's talk about it. It's

28:55

well known within wrestling that what Savage said on the

28:57

show echoed things he's been saying in the dressing room

28:59

dating back to the period shorter after his divorce in

29:02

the summer of 1992. Hogan

29:05

was very protective of McMahon whenever the subject

29:07

came up in his publicity tour for Mr.

29:09

Nanny. However, in an item in the

29:11

New York Daily News gossip section last week, it

29:13

said that Hogan would be meeting shortly with Ted

29:15

Turner about starting up a new

29:17

wrestling company and it is believed

29:20

the item wasn't planted by Hogan's side. Hogan

29:23

did turn down an invitation to appear

29:25

on WCW to plug his movie. And

29:28

here's the comments from Savage. Have you heard

29:30

the name Hulk Hogan, the five-time World Wrestling

29:32

Federation champion? Hulk Hogan became

29:34

at one time the biggest superstar in the history

29:37

of professional wrestling. I personally used to look up

29:39

to Hulk Hogan, but that was a big mistake.

29:42

I really thought he was a friend, but he's definitely

29:44

not. He's the worst prima donna I've ever

29:46

met in my life. Hulk Hogan's

29:48

ego went so far out of control that Hulk

29:50

Hogan consumed Terry Bollea, which is his real name.

29:53

Let's just say I've lost a lot of respect

29:55

for Hulk Hogan, aka Terry Bollea, both as a

29:57

man and as a human being. That's an exaggeration.

30:00

extreme understatement that I'm saying right there.

30:02

A lot of people out there might be thinking

30:04

it's professional jealousy, but putting professional jealousy

30:07

aside, if there is any, which I'm not saying

30:09

there is, I lost respect for

30:11

Hulk Hogan big time. Number

30:13

one, when he completely lied on our

30:15

sinew Hall, denying the use of anabolic

30:17

steroids, except for the rehabilitation of an

30:19

injury. And

30:22

then J R asks the question,

30:25

Savage, have you used steroids? And

30:27

he acknowledges, yes, I have. I used anabolic steroids.

30:29

And when I was on our sinew Hall, I

30:31

told the people I did, but they

30:33

were legal. It's like putting poison in your

30:35

body. And Savage is

30:37

asked if he uses them now. No, I sure

30:40

don't. Nobody does in the WWF, but at the

30:42

same time I was asked about it. I told

30:44

the truth. It was prevalent at

30:46

the time, not just in wrestling, but in

30:48

all sports, baseball, basketball, football, you name it,

30:50

it was there. It was in the

30:52

gyms and it was legal at the time. Before

30:55

we keep rolling here. Okay. You

30:58

guys have to talk with Vince about discussing

31:01

steroids in public like this, especially

31:03

given everything that's going on. Right.

31:07

The subject was out there. Everybody else was

31:09

talking about it. That was part of Vince's

31:11

strategy was rather than have everyone else talk

31:13

about it, we'll talk about it and we'll

31:15

get our story out and be honest about

31:18

it. The probably

31:20

one of the biggest things apparently that

31:22

did hit the company was the

31:25

our sinew Hall show. Everybody goes back to

31:27

that. Of when Hulk

31:29

said he didn't use steroids on our

31:31

sinew Hall, that backlash hurt and stung

31:33

for a while. There

31:36

were a lot of people that were upset

31:38

over that particularly Randy Savage. I wasn't

31:40

in the company at the time when

31:43

that happened. So I don't know firsthand

31:47

what that

31:49

general feeling was at the time. However,

31:52

I remember the after effects and Vince

31:55

talking about we're still reeling from those

31:57

comments. He

32:00

wanted to get his story out there that we

32:02

were going to do with the WWF radio. So

32:06

Savage acknowledges that he knew Hogan was

32:08

going to lie on the show and

32:10

he encouraged him not to, and to

32:13

just be honest and, you know, told

32:15

him the world was more forgiving quote.

32:18

He went on our scenario hall and lied. He

32:20

lied big time. He heard himself. I'm not worried

32:22

about him hurting himself though, but he heard all

32:25

of the world wrestling Federation, because like I said

32:27

before, he was a leader. He

32:29

was a big time, five time world wrestling

32:31

Federation champion. So when he talks, people listen.

32:36

Fair to say. I mean, you're sitting there

32:38

saying that Vince has said that, man, we're

32:40

still reeling from those comments. He

32:44

was a leader and it did. It absolutely

32:46

reflected back on us. And

32:49

I, I had

32:51

been told Vince, everyone encouraged him, just

32:53

go out and tell the truth and

32:55

because when he did take him, it

32:58

was legal. And it was

33:00

being prescribed by a doctor for him. So

33:03

again, all of those different things

33:05

that people forget about. Um, it

33:09

just was, it was not a good choice in my

33:11

opinion, and it hurt the

33:13

company. I think it hurt Hulk

33:15

for awhile and we were still getting

33:17

through it, but Vince wanted to get his side

33:19

out there and wanted to have a true voice

33:22

versus going through a third party,

33:24

like a reporter or another talk

33:27

show like that. Let me ask

33:29

you this realistically. We've never talked about this

33:31

before, but had he

33:33

not said what he said on our scenario, what

33:35

would have been different? I

33:38

think that it would have blown over a whole lot

33:40

faster because at that

33:43

point you take the gun out of their

33:45

hand. When you say, yes, I did it.

33:48

Um, it was legal. Uh, here's why I

33:50

did it. I don't do it anymore. Um,

33:53

but yeah, I sure did. And it probably

33:55

contributed to my size and it probably helped

33:57

me in a lot of ways. Great recoup

33:59

powers. that other stuff, but yes, I

34:01

did it. Now people

34:03

can't go back and say, he took

34:07

steroids. Well, yeah, he did. He already admitted

34:09

it. But now when

34:11

you say, no, I didn't take steroids,

34:15

you lied. So people go

34:17

back and now they have that to say,

34:19

no, he's a liar. Fuck him. No, he

34:21

lied. And everything

34:23

else, it kills the credibility

34:25

going forward with everything else.

34:29

And I believe the audience would have forgiven

34:31

him and would have route actually would have

34:34

rallied around him because

34:36

he was Hulk Hogan. I

34:38

think he had that power. Let's

34:41

talk about what Randy's doing

34:43

on screen because he's been

34:46

sort of in the ring, out of

34:48

the ring. I'm an announcer. I'm a wrestler, but

34:51

on the October 18th, raw, he is

34:53

involved in an angle to help turn

34:55

crush heal. Uh, crush is

34:57

rocking a beard and a mustache here. And he's

34:59

got Mr. Fuji with him and he's yelling at

35:01

Randy Savage about being jealous that crush has started

35:04

to surpass him. So Savage

35:06

gets in the ring and they're going to

35:08

try to talk about their problems. But as

35:10

they leave the ring, crush jumps

35:12

Savage and then press slams him and drops him on

35:14

the rail and Savage juices.

35:16

Oh, that's a directly from the

35:19

observer and from the

35:21

mouth and then crush destroys him

35:23

in the ring with Fuji and Jim

35:25

Cornette watching and a Yoko Zuna gives

35:27

Savage a bonsai to finish the job.

35:30

Now, most people remember crush came into

35:32

the company as the third member of

35:34

demolition and then eventually returned

35:37

as a baby face, which you've talked about

35:39

loving the shoot those vignettes over in Hawaii.

35:41

He's crushed or Kona crush, but he's going

35:43

to leave again and now come back here

35:46

as a heel. Why

35:48

did you guys decide to turn crush heal

35:50

and how in the hell did Randy Savage

35:52

become a part of it? Vince

35:55

wanted to get crush over. God damn it. Look

35:58

at that big bastard. Why isn't he? over.

36:01

Randy took that as a

36:03

challenge that I'll get him over. So

36:06

Randy and Brian were really good

36:08

friends. Randy felt

36:10

that Crush had all the potential in

36:13

the world and just

36:15

hadn't been programmed with the right guy yet. So

36:17

Randy really felt that he could get

36:20

Crush over and wanted to work a

36:22

program with him, which Vince obliged. They

36:25

thought maybe the

36:27

shock of bra and the friendly smiling,

36:30

you know, coconut Crush and Crush was

36:33

too baby faceless and too one-sided. So

36:37

they thought, well, hell, let's make him a big

36:39

nasty heel and put him

36:41

with Randy and see if that'll get him

36:43

over. But the genesis

36:45

of it was Vince being

36:48

frustrated that why isn't this big bastard

36:50

getting over? And Randy said, I'll get him

36:52

over. Okay, let's go.

36:56

In real life, what was their relationship

36:58

like Crush and Savage? Randy

37:01

and Crush were best of friends.

37:03

They would travel together. They trained

37:06

together and they were best

37:08

of friends. So they were always, always

37:10

talking about things and ideas. Fair

37:13

to say that he was trying to help

37:15

his buddy get over. He

37:17

was. He definitely was. And

37:20

that's why he volunteered because he wasn't working full-time

37:22

at the time. It was announced

37:24

in mid-October that Tokyo Sports was reporting

37:27

the WWF is going to do a

37:29

handful of shows in Japan in April

37:31

of 94. And

37:34

McMahon was reported to say they wouldn't

37:36

be working with the Japanese office, but

37:38

would be using Japanese wrestlers. And

37:41

he's going to be going to Japan for a

37:43

press conference to make the announcement for the shows.

37:46

And it's believed they're going to be indoor shows

37:48

in like 10 to 15,000 seat arenas. Allegedly,

37:52

War and the WWF were

37:55

putting back together their old

37:57

working relationship. IKEA

38:00

Sato was at the November 11th show

38:02

at Corcoran Hall and announced that Tenru

38:04

and the great Kabuki and one other

38:06

war wrestler would be appearing at the

38:08

Royal Rumble and

38:11

Meltzer would freestyle. This is likely reciprocation

38:13

for the war top wrestlers being booked

38:15

on top when the WWF tours Japan

38:18

in April. Chat

38:20

me up here. What can you tell us

38:22

about you guys wanting to do some

38:25

shows in Japan, but we're not going to work with

38:27

all Japan or new Japan who are the big players.

38:29

And instead we're going to do something

38:31

with war. Well,

38:34

we were looking and we had found

38:36

out through other co-promotions

38:38

with the Japanese promotions that

38:43

so much of what they, what they

38:45

do when you hear about these huge

38:47

houses and Oh my

38:50

God, there were so many people in the Tokyo dome

38:52

where there were so many people here. What

38:55

they leave out is that

38:57

those shows for the most part are

39:00

sponsored and the sponsor has the

39:02

tickets and the sponsor normally gives

39:04

the tickets away. The

39:08

show that we had in the Tokyo

39:11

dome with all Japan and new Japan,

39:13

the sponsor was an optometrist

39:15

company. They do eyeglasses kind

39:17

of like lens crafters here. Well,

39:20

how you got your tickets was you had

39:23

to go buy this lens crafter, whatever it

39:25

was, the equivalent in Tokyo, do

39:27

an exam, go in there to get your

39:30

free tickets for the dome and

39:32

that's how you got tickets. Yes, they

39:34

also sold tickets as well, but the

39:36

majority of the tickets were dispersed by

39:38

sponsors. And that's how people would get

39:40

these for the big events. And

39:43

we discovered this because we got into the

39:45

muck of the financials of why how are

39:47

we going to split this gate? And I

39:49

said, well, there is no gate because people

39:52

don't buy tickets. They, they

39:55

get their tickets through sponsors. The money

39:57

comes from the sponsor, but they

39:59

didn't want to. So it was, it was

40:01

a convoluted deal that Ben said, you know, we

40:03

don't need. A

40:06

Japanese promotion to go in and

40:09

do these. They wanted to

40:11

see, and one of the big criticisms was

40:13

from the wrestling fans in

40:17

Japan was they didn't want to see WWF

40:19

guys against new Japan or all Japan guys. They

40:26

wanted to see the WWF guys. They

40:28

wanted to see the WWF product, right?

40:31

They wanted the shit they're

40:33

seeing on TV. And

40:36

they had been, we had always

40:39

been told by, because you're

40:41

working with another group. Well, it's gotta

40:43

be against our guys or else you

40:45

won't draw. So

40:47

this was Vince's again, another test

40:49

to see, all right, let's see.

40:52

How we do on our own. We are

40:54

going to need some names in Japan. But

40:58

let's see how we mainly do promoting

41:00

our, ourselves with our angles and with

41:02

our stuff and not

41:04

using an all Japan or new Japan. Hey,

41:07

I want to give you guys a little pro tip, something that

41:09

I know Bruce would love for me to share here on the

41:11

program. Amazing kind

41:13

has saved his life

41:15

recently. He is going through

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like her whole mood changed. She was much

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about are the great works you can

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42:26

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42:28

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In fact he was a producer and

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really he's really helping us take care

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44:24

I found this to be an interesting tidbit. In

44:27

late October and early November, Sabu wrestles

44:29

a couple of dark matches as a

44:31

tryout for the company. In

44:33

the first one he wrestled Scott Taylor who's going

44:35

to go on to be Scotty 2 Hotty and

44:37

in the second one he wrestles Owen Hart. And

44:40

Meltzer would say as a result of these tryouts he

44:42

was actually offered a job but wound

44:44

up turning it down because it would have required

44:47

him to give up his FMW gig in Japan

44:49

which allegedly was for more money. Chat

44:52

me up. What do you

44:54

remember about Sabu having a tryout here in

44:56

93 because it is really really hard to

44:58

imagine him coming in and

45:00

working for you guys full-time and how that

45:02

may have affected ECW because

45:04

he was obviously their first major

45:08

draw. Well I don't

45:10

even think ECW was a factor at

45:12

this point and... No I didn't mean

45:14

that it would have taken him away

45:16

from them then. I just mean how

45:19

would ECW's future have been different if

45:21

they had to go forward with no

45:23

Sabu because now he's working with

45:25

you guys and what might that have looked like? You

45:28

know a lot of hardcore fans really

45:30

loved Jinzei Shinzaki who

45:32

was wrestling for you guys with Sakushi and

45:34

his match with Bret Hart and

45:37

you know what would that have

45:39

looked like? Sabu versus Bret Sabu

45:41

versus Shawn Michaels. I know it

45:43

didn't happen but it is fun to think about. Sure

45:46

it is and I think that Sabu would have been a hell of

45:48

a addition to the roster at

45:50

that time but it was I don't

45:53

think that it was the

45:55

right time for him. He did have his FMW stuff

45:57

he was making good money and plus he was listening...

46:00

to his uncle who helped him make

46:02

his business decisions. And his

46:05

uncle, the chic, the original chic,

46:08

uh, did not feel it was best for

46:10

his career

46:13

at the time to come into the WWF.

46:16

So he stayed with Japan. I think he

46:18

did all right between Japan and ECW all

46:20

those years, but yeah, you're right. Then imagine

46:22

the matches you could have had with Sabu

46:24

and Sean, Sabu and Brett, Sabu

46:26

and Undertaker. Just go on

46:28

down the line. Uh, just didn't

46:31

work out because again, the grass was greener on

46:33

the other side. Chat

46:35

me up. How was, um, how

46:38

was Sabu received? Like what did, what

46:41

did Vince think of Sabu? What did Pat

46:43

think of Sabu? What was your take on

46:45

Sabu? When you, just a guy who's got

46:47

a lot of underground buzz

46:50

on the independence and, um, people

46:53

are saying he's crazy and he's breaking these

46:55

tables, but obviously he's got a legacy in

46:57

the business through his uncle. Chat

46:59

me up. What was the take inside

47:01

the office about Sabu? Well,

47:04

we had heard, and again, he didn't have

47:06

quite that reputation at the time. I had

47:08

just seen him because he looked like, he

47:10

looked like a younger version and a modern

47:13

day version of the chic. And we didn't

47:15

have that type of a heel. He

47:18

looked menacing and he had a look

47:20

of a, of a nasty heel that

47:22

you could program with just about anybody.

47:25

We were looking for talent that

47:28

could work with Lex and that

47:30

anti-American role. He

47:34

had, he had talent, he being Sabu.

47:36

So we just want him. I think

47:38

everybody liked him from talent standpoint, but

47:42

it just wasn't a fit at the time. I

47:45

mean, this was, this was before there were

47:48

any wild, crazy, silly stories about him

47:50

out there. Glen

47:53

Jacobs is another guy whose name pops

47:55

up. He was getting a tryout and

47:57

he had been working in Florida. as

48:00

Sid Powers and

48:03

he worked in Memphis as doomsday and

48:06

I think he even was briefly the

48:08

Christmas creature. Of course we

48:10

know Glenn Jacobs is gonna go on to be Cain

48:13

but first, I guess eventually

48:15

he's gonna be the mayor too it's worth mentioning,

48:18

but first he's gonna be an evil dentist a

48:20

couple of years after this. What

48:23

do you remember about early reporting on Glenn

48:25

Jacobs tryout matches? He doesn't wind up getting

48:28

a gig right here. Why was

48:30

it not the right fit for him? Glenn

48:33

was greener than grass. Glenn was greener

48:35

than the Christmas tree outfit that he

48:37

wore as the Christmas

48:40

menace or whatever the hell he

48:42

was. Christmas creature in Memphis, Tennessee

48:44

which was hilarious and

48:46

every time that that picture would surface we would kind

48:48

of put it up around the dressing

48:51

room for the Christmas creature which was

48:53

a green unitard

48:56

basically head to toe

48:58

with tinsel and balls

49:00

hanging from it. So

49:03

it was it was kind of funny. He

49:06

was just very very green and Jerry

49:08

Jarrett had promoted

49:10

him as the

49:13

second coming of Sid

49:15

Vicious. He looks just like

49:17

Sid and his

49:19

work is as good. You

49:23

could bring him in and put him right

49:25

on top. So we

49:27

brought him in take a look at him and he

49:29

did have a great look. I mean the big bastard

49:33

but he was he was not ready for prime

49:35

time and we needed to get him a little

49:38

more experience and get him kind of down

49:40

on the farm before we were ready to

49:42

bring him in. But we liked

49:44

the thighs there was potential plus

49:47

he was a super nice guy on top of that. So

49:51

there was something there like you know we

49:53

didn't have the developmental we didn't have a performance

49:55

center. We just had

49:57

places like Memphis where we could send them or

50:00

some place that had a school in some place

50:02

that they could work every day. That's

50:05

what needed to happen with Glenn at the time. Glenn

50:07

was going to be one of

50:09

the, and he was actually in Boston

50:12

to be one of

50:14

the nights, uh, under the mask,

50:16

which we'll get to here a little, in a little. No, I

50:18

had that in my notes and I wanted to ask and I'm

50:20

glad you went ahead and brought it up, tap

50:22

me up. Why didn't that happen? Because

50:25

he just was, he

50:28

was just too green. Just way too

50:30

green. He was

50:33

not even a year in the business. I don't think at

50:35

that time didn't really

50:37

know. Why'd you bring him up there? If

50:39

he knew he was too green. Because

50:43

we didn't know we

50:45

needed bodies. But

50:47

it that way. And we

50:50

just didn't know. We didn't know how green he

50:52

was even at that point, rather have him than not

50:54

have him just in case. All right. Um,

50:58

let's talk about how show business Meltzer would

51:00

report on November 1st. They debuted the B

51:02

team shows this past week and the reports

51:04

where they drew poorly as in less than

51:06

a thousand folks, because they're

51:08

working with local charities, a lot of

51:10

normal costs of running a show removed.

51:12

The 18 was loaded up shows and

51:15

those three poorly for their debut in

51:17

Amherst, Massachusetts, only around 1500 fans, but

51:19

they did excellent in Pittsburgh. 9,800 fans for $119,000 gate.

51:25

Pretty good in Baltimore the next day. And

51:27

then fair in Hershey on Sunday to wrap

51:29

up the weekend. The 18 crowds

51:32

over the weekend range from

51:34

poor in Detroit, only 1700 fans. To

51:38

really good in Nassau Coliseum, 10,300

51:41

fans paying 160 grand. This

51:45

stuff is fascinating to me, Bruce, because

51:47

it feels like you're either hot or not,

51:49

depending on what town you're in. Well,

51:52

that was just a case of which, which town

51:54

was hot and what the hell was going on in

51:56

those towns too. So it was, you've

51:59

got, geographical challenges that you have

52:01

to work with. And frankly,

52:04

some people in

52:06

a WWE stronghold, they

52:09

were buying everything in, in,

52:11

in not a particularly stronghold.

52:15

They were kind of shitting on it. Is

52:19

this, um, I

52:21

mean, at the time you've got

52:23

some guys who are still hangovers from, you

52:26

know, the, the Heyday when Hogan was

52:28

on top and you

52:31

know, you guys are selling out way

52:33

in advance and now you've got some

52:35

rather anemic house shows. Any

52:38

of those guys, maybe

52:40

being a little negative. I

52:43

think that everybody gets negative when the houses

52:45

are down and money's down. People start to

52:48

point fingers and say, well,

52:50

what the hell is going on here? It

52:52

was the sign of the

52:54

times. I don't know that WCW was

52:56

doing any business. Nobody was doing business

52:58

at that time, but we

53:01

were the big dogs and we were most

53:03

noticeable and it hurt, it hurt when you

53:05

got out there because we're,

53:08

we're booking. Everything

53:11

that we've got on television, we're, we

53:14

had brought Lawler in and thought, okay, this

53:17

is going to help business some, um,

53:20

and it just didn't. It was, it was

53:23

a snake bit time of year and

53:25

our ideas just weren't

53:27

hitting. Let's

53:31

talk a little bit about the a

53:33

show and the B show difference for years and

53:35

years, we've heard that. Well, if

53:37

Hogan's on the card, that's the A show,

53:40

but now Hogan's gone. So the A

53:42

show here, the shows that are drawing better

53:44

are being headlined by Brett Hart and

53:46

Jerry Lawler. The B

53:49

shows are being headlined by Undertaker

53:51

and Yoko Zuna. And

53:53

those shows are only doing 800 to 1500 a night. How

53:58

did you get on the side? What was an A? and

54:00

what was the B as far as talent? We

54:03

were just pretty much divided up and look

54:06

at it in the A shows there's

54:08

different ways to look at the A and

54:11

B shows as well. The A show was

54:13

usually a top market like in New York,

54:15

Dallas, Chicago, and LA and a

54:17

B show would be a secondary market that

54:20

had a smaller population. For example,

54:23

Louisville would be a B show. It's

54:25

just because of the population. So

54:31

you'd still want to give them a good

54:33

card. You'd still want to give them the

54:35

best main event you can and it

54:39

was take you to top, take you to top

54:42

angles and issues and you split

54:44

them up and one's going to the main and one's going

54:46

to the secondary. If

54:50

business is great at

54:53

the time then both of those shows are going to

54:55

do fairly equal business. It's just

54:57

a matter of population to draw from

55:01

is what would determine the A and B town. But a lot

55:04

of times it would just be two

55:07

different cards, even it up and go.

55:10

What it wasn't like we had that the

55:15

big main attraction at the time

55:17

it wasn't we just didn't

55:19

have that. We were building. We

55:22

were building Luger. We were

55:24

building Brett. We were building

55:26

Undertaker and none

55:28

of those guys were at

55:30

the standalone top star,

55:33

you know, megastar. Everybody's just gonna come

55:35

see them do whatever they want to

55:37

do. Steve Austin got

55:39

to, Rock got to, Undertaker got

55:42

to, but they

55:44

weren't there yet. We weren't there yet. I

55:49

mean do you remember anybody requesting, you know, back

55:51

in the day we would hear or guys

55:54

who are what we'll call underneath on

55:56

the card. They would really want to

55:58

be on the Hogan card. Does

56:00

that even exist here for 1993 since he's gone? Is

56:04

there a preference one way or another where guys

56:07

think I want to be with on

56:09

that card because it's that guy's there. I'll make more

56:11

money or is it just based on, you know,

56:14

whoever their traveling buddies are, are there

56:16

even requests like that? Not

56:19

really during this time. They just want to be at their

56:21

buddies for the most part. Let's

56:24

talk about, um, Medusa here. Uh,

56:26

she accepted an offer in November

56:29

and comes into the company in December. And

56:31

of course we know she's going to go

56:33

on to be known as a Lundra blaze.

56:36

We haven't talked about Medusa a lot here on

56:38

the show. Chat me up. How

56:40

does she get on WWF's radar? Who

56:43

was the proponent of signing her? And

56:45

what do you remember about putting that deal together? I

56:48

believe JJ Dillon put the deal together and

56:50

got her in, but she had been sending

56:52

tapes in for a long time. And that

56:54

was another. Case

56:57

of Paul Heyman getting me tapes and

56:59

saying, Hey, Medusa's looking to make a

57:01

move and do something different.

57:04

So Vince wanted to, by

57:07

God, get the women's division going again. And

57:09

Medusa was the answer to that. Change

57:12

her name. Did the Lunder blaze stuff. I

57:15

went down to Tampa, Florida, shot a bunch

57:17

of vignettes with her on her little pink

57:19

Harley motorcycle. And

57:22

we built her up is, is the second

57:24

coming. And as kind of like

57:28

Ronda Rousey is now, that's what

57:30

we wanted to do with the

57:32

Lunder blaze back then and build

57:34

her up and did a lot of vignettes

57:36

to bring her in also bringing in bull

57:39

nocono from Japan so that she would have

57:41

a big nasty foreign heel to work with.

57:44

And we knew they would have great

57:46

matches and something that people had not

57:48

seen before in the women's division. That

57:52

was a nice addition. When you guys,

57:54

uh, decide to sign her, is

57:56

this one of those let's fly her to New York and

57:58

let her meet with Vince. deals. I

58:02

don't remember if she met with Vince or

58:04

not. I remember, I remember going down and

58:06

doing the vignettes. I did the vignettes by

58:08

myself, um, in

58:11

Tampa, but I don't remember if

58:13

she came up and met with Vince or not, or

58:15

if it was all done with JJ signed her and

58:17

let's go. Bruce,

58:19

I know we've talked about steroids quite a

58:21

bit here on the show, but I do want

58:24

to bring up that news day, a long Island

58:26

based daily newspaper ran a three page story

58:29

with a page one photo on the

58:31

investigation of the WWF, of course, centering

58:33

around the steroid story. And

58:36

here's what Meltzer wrote. Actually the biggest

58:39

surprise in that story, which was released nationally on

58:41

the wire services the next day, and was

58:44

the subject of an unfunny Saturday night

58:46

live spoof that even evening was

58:48

even prominently featured, uh,

58:51

talk to me about the

58:53

Saturday night live skit. Nobody

58:55

talks about this, but they

58:58

sort of spoofed this and I don't even

59:00

remember it. I don't either.

59:03

What the hell? Why I don't remember the

59:06

Saturday night live skit at all on

59:08

the steroid trial. So that's not

59:11

saying that they didn't do it, but I

59:13

don't remember that at all. And at the

59:15

time, everybody was doing something and writing something

59:17

about us and steroids because everybody knew it

59:20

was coming down in

59:22

early November, both the ring announcer,

59:24

Mike McGurk and the television interviewer,

59:27

Bonnie Blackstone were let go and

59:30

McGurk was told the company wanted to

59:32

cut back on transportation expenses. We

59:34

get lots of questions about Mike McGurk in

59:37

any good stories about her, you can share with us. Mike

59:40

McGurk was the daughter

59:43

of legendary wrestler and

59:45

promoter in Oklahoma, Leroy

59:47

McGurk. And, huh,

59:50

huh, Sasha

59:52

Fras. But Mike had

59:55

put up rings and helped her father

59:57

in the promotion business. So

1:00:01

one day Vince tells me

1:00:04

this was my

1:00:06

first summer with the WWF.

1:00:10

He says, uh, you ever work

1:00:12

as a talent? I'm like, well, I've

1:00:14

done, uh, a

1:00:17

few seconds of color commentary, but I've done all

1:00:19

the interviews, I do all the stand up interviews

1:00:21

for the local towns. He

1:00:23

says, how about play by play? And I said, Nope, never done play

1:00:25

by play. He goes, Oh, great. We're

1:00:27

going to put you in, um, as

1:00:30

play by play in Houston and

1:00:33

for the, some of the, the

1:00:35

cable properties and I've

1:00:37

got a, uh, got

1:00:40

a surprise for you. I'm going to

1:00:42

put you with a couple of, a couple

1:00:44

of unknowns, but they're going to be great

1:00:47

Duke, the Duke of Dorchester,

1:00:50

Pete Nordie, he's a character you're going to

1:00:52

love him. And Mike McGurk, uh,

1:00:54

she's never done anything like this. So you're going to have

1:00:56

to carry her through it. Who

1:01:00

the fuck's going to carry me through it? I

1:01:02

had never done play by play

1:01:04

in my life. So

1:01:09

the only ones that I really have to base it

1:01:12

on is I've got Paul Bosch who didn't really do

1:01:14

play by play either. Paul just sold

1:01:16

tickets for the next event. You got

1:01:18

Jim Ross who I

1:01:20

couldn't emulate. And

1:01:23

then you got Vince. And

1:01:25

so I said, well, WWL, I'm going to

1:01:27

pattern myself after Vince. And

1:01:30

I had to work with, with Mike

1:01:32

who had never basically spoken into a

1:01:35

microphone before, much

1:01:37

less be a

1:01:39

color commentator analyst that

1:01:42

no one had ever heard of or what credentials she had. So

1:01:44

that was a challenge. And then

1:01:46

shortly thereafter, we decided to make

1:01:49

Mike our first female ring announcer,

1:01:51

much to Howard Finkel's chagrin. She

1:01:55

was a great ring announcer. Why

1:01:58

do you think, um, You

1:02:00

know, the time was, I mean, it was time to go do something

1:02:02

else. When

1:02:04

it was time for her to leave at this

1:02:06

point, it was a cost cutting deal.

1:02:09

She was only a ring

1:02:11

announcer. The other

1:02:14

ring announcers that we had were a part

1:02:16

of the ring crew, were part of the

1:02:18

production crew. So they were doing double duty.

1:02:20

They had other jobs. Mike didn't have another

1:02:22

job at that time. So that's why she

1:02:25

was cut the same thing with

1:02:27

Bonnie Blackstone. It was a cost

1:02:29

cutting measure. Let's,

1:02:32

uh, I'll switch and talk

1:02:34

about Bonnie Blackstone. Well, I haven't really talked

1:02:37

about her before. Um, Joe

1:02:40

Fowler was fired as an announcer and

1:02:42

Jim Ross would be taking over doing

1:02:44

the face to face segments and Raymond

1:02:47

or Joe would ultimately take over

1:02:50

Bonnie Blackstone spot doing the interviews.

1:02:53

You were around for a little while when Bonnie

1:02:55

was there. Any good Bonnie stories? Anything interesting you

1:02:57

can share with us about Bonnie Blackstone? Now

1:03:00

Bonnie would come in and do TVs and

1:03:02

do a couple of the interviews. I had

1:03:05

known Bonnie from my time

1:03:07

at global wrestling. She was the

1:03:09

wife of Joe Petasino, who used

1:03:11

to do a pro wrestling syndicated

1:03:14

television show, highlighting all

1:03:16

of the regional wrestling promotions. Bonnie was a

1:03:18

sweet lady. She was a really nice lady

1:03:21

and did a good job,

1:03:23

but it was just a short lived kind

1:03:26

of experiment that Vince didn't feel

1:03:28

was worth pursuing and, and

1:03:30

moving on. And then Joe Fowler,

1:03:33

Joe Fowler was on a, um,

1:03:36

it wasn't American gladiators. It

1:03:38

was another show like American

1:03:41

gladiators that I was watching.

1:03:44

And I called Vince and said, Hey, take

1:03:46

a look at this guy. He could be, Oh,

1:03:49

I think he could be a pitch man for

1:03:51

us. She on the Oakland roll, or maybe

1:03:54

he could even do play by play. I don't know, but

1:03:56

take a look at him. So

1:03:58

Vince and I are watching. this show, we're both

1:04:00

on the phone and I love him, get him

1:04:03

up here. So

1:04:05

I find Joe Fowler and I bring him in.

1:04:08

We interview him. We do the

1:04:10

screen test. We do

1:04:12

all that crap with him. We

1:04:15

fall in love with him. He can

1:04:17

sell like nobody, the,

1:04:19

the, the, Oh God, he was great salesman.

1:04:23

But the workload of trying

1:04:25

to do the event centers, which is

1:04:28

you sit in the studio and man,

1:04:30

you are cranking them out for every

1:04:32

single market every single week. And

1:04:35

you're throwing to all kinds of, it's hard work

1:04:37

and it's a lot of hours. And that wasn't

1:04:39

for Joe. And he was

1:04:41

making, we, we paid

1:04:44

him. We basically bought out his contract.

1:04:46

We paid him a lot of money

1:04:48

in comparison to what

1:04:50

other people that we would have hired

1:04:52

from within the wrestling business would have

1:04:55

made. And after

1:04:57

about, I don't know, five,

1:05:00

six months, Vince decided

1:05:02

this is not working. And he

1:05:04

was complaining about everything and just

1:05:07

had become a nuisance overall. Um,

1:05:10

because of the workload, it wasn't what he was used to.

1:05:12

He was used to going in for three

1:05:15

or four weeks doing a show and

1:05:18

that being it. Let's,

1:05:21

uh, let's talk about the SMW layout. You guys did

1:05:24

in a WWF magazine. Uh,

1:05:28

this is the first time Tammy Fitch is in

1:05:30

the WWF magazine and Tracy Smothers is there rock

1:05:32

and roll express the dirty white boy. Um,

1:05:35

I know that you guys are

1:05:37

working with Jim Cornette. Does

1:05:39

he request that you guys do a feature

1:05:41

on smoking mountain? Do you think if you had to guess,

1:05:43

or is this probably just somebody at the magazine

1:05:46

looking for content? Smokey

1:05:49

mountain motherfucker. Courtney,

1:05:51

we were using corny

1:05:54

as a talent and we brought corny in with the

1:05:56

midnight express. not

1:06:00

the midnight express, the heavenly

1:06:02

bodies. Um, he

1:06:06

was working with us and Vince wanted him

1:06:08

to manage Yokozuna, which was a fun conversation

1:06:10

when that took place. But

1:06:13

it was just way to spotlight some of those

1:06:15

guys, because we were going to be using some

1:06:17

of the smoky mountain talent and we wanted to

1:06:19

have them as a feeder system for the WWF.

1:06:22

So the magazine, just a feature. Well,

1:06:25

let's talk about why we're here. And

1:06:27

I'm sure we're going to cover this story a

1:06:29

lot more when we do a Jerry Lawler episode

1:06:32

one day. I do think

1:06:34

he's probably one of the handful of

1:06:36

profiles that I want to do more

1:06:38

than others, just because nobody's got a

1:06:41

story like Jerry Lawler. Meltzer

1:06:44

would report Jerry Lawler, longtime co-owner of

1:06:46

the United States Wrestling Association, and one

1:06:49

of the most enduring regional headliners in

1:06:51

the history of pro wrestling was indicted

1:06:53

on November 12th of one count of

1:06:55

second degree rape and three counts of

1:06:58

second degree sodomy and one

1:07:00

count of harassing a witness Lawler

1:07:03

who was scheduled to be arraigned

1:07:05

in Louisville on November 22nd was

1:07:07

charged by Jefferson County, Kentucky grand

1:07:09

jury of the five counts

1:07:11

in reference to an alleged encounter with a

1:07:13

13 year old Louisville girl.

1:07:16

He was also being investigated for

1:07:18

criminal allegations in Southern Indiana on

1:07:21

what are allegedly similar circumstances.

1:07:24

I guess we should mention Jerry is 43 at this time.

1:07:27

He's going to turn 44 on November

1:07:29

29th. Uh,

1:07:32

the world wrestling Federation faced with its

1:07:34

own image problem over many printed allegations

1:07:36

of sexually deviant behavior among two of

1:07:38

its former employees, a steroid scandal and

1:07:41

a nearly two year long justice department investigation,

1:07:43

which went public in the New York mainstream

1:07:45

media with front page news day story less

1:07:48

than two weeks prior, immediately

1:07:50

suspended Lawler without pay upon receiving

1:07:52

word Friday of the indictment, even

1:07:55

though he was the company's hottest heel

1:07:59

is match on November. 24th, the survivor series

1:08:01

pay-per-view where he was the team with

1:08:03

three unknown mass nights against Brett, Owen,

1:08:05

Keith, and Bruce Hart was

1:08:07

considered by most to be the top drawing match

1:08:09

on the show, even though it was positioned by

1:08:11

the company a second from the top company

1:08:14

officials announced the next evening on his radio

1:08:16

WWF show that Lawler had been indicted on

1:08:18

five charges in Louisville and put

1:08:21

on immediate hiatus from the WWF pending

1:08:23

clearing up his legal situation. The

1:08:25

company on the same show announced that

1:08:27

Sean Michaels will be replacing Lawler and

1:08:29

the survivor series. And Michaels

1:08:31

is expected to be Lawler's replacement in many

1:08:33

of the already advertised house show matches with

1:08:36

Brett Hart in the upcoming weeks. And some

1:08:38

markets, Jeff Jarrett will be

1:08:40

replacing Lawler and matches against Brett

1:08:42

and other markets, including the early

1:08:44

December, California shows. Lawler's

1:08:46

role as a co-host on WWF superstars

1:08:49

as of this coming weekend will likely

1:08:51

be taken by Bruce Pritchard. Who

1:08:53

will use the television name Rio

1:08:56

Rogers doing a heel character designed

1:08:58

to be a parody of WCW Booker

1:09:00

dusty roads. Lots to talk

1:09:02

about here. Um, but

1:09:04

let's talk about where

1:09:07

you were and what you heard

1:09:09

about Lawler's legal troubles. Look,

1:09:13

you know, all I heard was exactly

1:09:15

what you read and here's where, where

1:09:17

you always have to be careful because.

1:09:21

When you're, you're involved in things like that,

1:09:23

you don't want to know, right? You

1:09:25

don't want you, I'd like the last

1:09:28

thing that anyone wanted to do

1:09:30

was speak to Jerry Lawler and say, Jerry, what

1:09:32

happened? I don't want to know. I don't

1:09:34

want to hear it. Cause I

1:09:36

don't want to be called as a witness. I

1:09:38

want, let the court let the, uh, investigators

1:09:41

and the lawyers and everything do

1:09:43

their part, do your investigation and

1:09:46

whatever they come up with fine, but

1:09:48

it, it protects. You

1:09:50

know, Vince is funny. You say,

1:09:52

why didn't you know? Well, Vince didn't tell me.

1:09:55

Why didn't Vince tell you if you're right next

1:09:57

to him to protect me. And

1:10:01

that was how he looked at it and that's

1:10:03

how we always operated if i didn't need to

1:10:05

know i didn't want to know i didn't want

1:10:08

to know what was going on in jerry lawless

1:10:10

life because i didn't want somebody come to me

1:10:12

and say hey bruce said this or bruce said

1:10:14

that. So i only

1:10:16

knew what was being printed we

1:10:19

didn't discuss it amongst ourselves other

1:10:21

than how does it affect business

1:10:24

what do we do we spend

1:10:26

a jerry until the court case

1:10:28

and whatever happens happens. And

1:10:30

then we'll reevaluate after that so

1:10:33

that was the extent of how we looked

1:10:35

at vincent i remember vincent in there going

1:10:37

jerry i don't want to know i

1:10:40

don't want to know but i can't have you on tv.

1:10:43

I can't use you go home get this

1:10:45

straightened out do what it is you need

1:10:47

to do to fix this

1:10:50

and if you get it fixed everything's fine

1:10:52

come back your job will be here. But

1:10:56

i can help you in any way with an attorney but

1:10:59

i can't help you with advice here anything

1:11:01

else i don't i don't need to know

1:11:03

what did or didn't happen. Don't

1:11:05

want to know a lot of

1:11:09

a lot of people in wrestling have.

1:11:13

Add the insinuation that.

1:11:16

The memphis territory had

1:11:19

a reputation for

1:11:21

underage girls right or

1:11:23

wrong. A lot of

1:11:26

people have made that. Inference.

1:11:30

Would you echo that i mean that you heard

1:11:32

the same thing not saying that it's true but

1:11:35

that. The whispers

1:11:37

in the locker room amongst the boys behind

1:11:39

the curtain was that memphis

1:11:41

had a bit of a reputation in that regard.

1:11:44

Absolutely yeah did i did hear that.

1:11:48

I never worked the memphis territory

1:11:51

for for lawler and jaret so

1:11:53

again it's. It's

1:11:56

all here say rumored innuendo and that's one

1:11:58

of those things that okay. Everybody hears,

1:12:00

everybody talks about and, and whispers

1:12:02

about it, but it may

1:12:05

just be a rumor and innuendo and it

1:12:07

is what it is that didn't help his

1:12:09

case. Right. That's exactly right. So

1:12:13

people are talking and whispering because

1:12:15

there was already smoke there. When

1:12:17

this comes up, you know,

1:12:19

you're, you're guilty till proven innocent. All

1:12:23

right, listen up. We've got great

1:12:25

news. We're excited to announce a

1:12:27

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1:13:04

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swag, but it's also an easy way to support the

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show. That's shop wrestling,

1:13:11

merch.com. Well,

1:13:14

let's, um, let's

1:13:16

talk about the decision to use

1:13:19

Jeff Jarrett as a replacement, why

1:13:22

is Jeff the right guy to step in and

1:13:25

take all our spot? It

1:13:27

was for house shows and it was just something

1:13:29

to get out there. I think we had

1:13:31

already started the Jeff

1:13:34

Jarrett vignettes on TV by this time.

1:13:37

So people knew of him and it was

1:13:39

somebody knew that Brett could have a good

1:13:41

match with, and that

1:13:44

was it. He felt, you know, he felt

1:13:47

that he filled out that space on the card. Talk

1:13:50

to me about why Shawn Michaels is the

1:13:52

right guy to headline the pay-per-view. Of course,

1:13:54

this is before, I mean,

1:13:57

they had a match at the prior survivor series,

1:13:59

Bret and Shawn. Sean, but this

1:14:01

is before Brett and Sean

1:14:03

is really a thing. Um,

1:14:05

why was, why was he the

1:14:08

right guy and what would he have done on this

1:14:10

show? Had he not filled in for

1:14:12

Lawler? Well, I answered the last

1:14:14

question first. He wouldn't have done anything on the

1:14:16

show because we had been doing a suspension gimmick

1:14:18

with him over the intercontinental

1:14:20

championship and all that. The

1:14:22

reason that we chose Sean is

1:14:25

whenever you have a substitution and

1:14:27

especially a substitution in one of

1:14:29

your top marquee matches, you always

1:14:31

try to make the substitution better

1:14:33

than the original. If that is

1:14:36

at all possible because you

1:14:38

want to deliver, you want to over deliver

1:14:40

to your audience. It's possible.

1:14:42

That's what you do. So

1:14:44

we, you know, bit

1:14:47

the bullet and said, okay, well, we'll

1:14:49

end this Sean stuff. And, you

1:14:52

know, here's Sean, he's there. He can work.

1:14:54

We can use him. He's

1:14:56

the best choice of

1:14:58

a name that we had available to

1:15:00

us to put into that role. So

1:15:03

that's why we did it. All

1:15:07

right. Our most requested thing, Rio

1:15:10

fucking Rogers. She's that

1:15:13

it cannot be our most requested thing. No,

1:15:15

dude, I get hit with this three times

1:15:17

a day. Um, we,

1:15:19

a lot of people want to hear the story of how this

1:15:21

came to be. Meltzer even wrote

1:15:24

in the newsletter, doing a heel

1:15:26

character designed as a parody of

1:15:28

WCW Booker dusty roads. Tell

1:15:30

me who's idea it was. Obviously you

1:15:32

had been doing the dusty impression around

1:15:34

the office and around the guys for

1:15:37

a long time. You're really

1:15:39

tight with Vince at this point. How

1:15:41

do you become the on air character? Why

1:15:44

are you the choice? And

1:15:46

when Vince talks to you about doing that, or

1:15:48

do you pitch yourself to do it? How

1:15:51

does it sort of morph

1:15:53

into this real Rogers persona?

1:15:57

Well, kind of like here, sometimes I would just go

1:15:59

into the. American dream babies and just say, well,

1:16:01

listen, if we're going to do this, how bad

1:16:04

we love funny like a monkey. And

1:16:06

I would, I would drop

1:16:08

into, I do it. Thanksgiving

1:16:11

around strangers. I'll just go into

1:16:14

dusty because all. I

1:16:16

think what would Dustin say right here, baby?

1:16:18

How would he relax? Ooh, look at that

1:16:20

pumpkin pie babies. I

1:16:24

just, you know, I fall into

1:16:26

dusty. He's easy to fall into.

1:16:29

No, give it a little bit of that whipped cream. Make

1:16:31

it excellent with it for me, baby. I

1:16:34

love you, darling. I

1:16:36

did that a lot. Jerry Jarrett,

1:16:39

who would sit in with us

1:16:41

from time to time on creative, would, he just

1:16:43

would get tickled at that. He thought that was

1:16:45

the funniest thing he had ever heard. And, and

1:16:48

why don't you do a character

1:16:50

and do that voice? And

1:16:53

my thing was like, I'm doing dusty. It's

1:16:57

not a voice. It's motherfucking dusty roads.

1:16:59

You know, man. It's not like I'm

1:17:01

just, I created a voice. I know.

1:17:03

Okay. Well, kind of like, uh, yeah.

1:17:07

So, uh, I read all of

1:17:09

my observers this week. It's

1:17:12

not a voice I created. It was, it was,

1:17:14

uh, do a

1:17:17

dusty. So he stayed on and stayed

1:17:19

on. And when this happened, we had

1:17:21

no one else to just slide in

1:17:23

to do this. And

1:17:25

Jerry Jarrett pitched events that

1:17:29

I should do this Rio Rogers character. I

1:17:33

hated it. Hate,

1:17:36

hate, hate, hate, hated it. And

1:17:38

there are very few things that

1:17:40

I ever, I will actually, I

1:17:42

never refused to do anything, including

1:17:44

Rio Rogers, but Rio

1:17:47

Rogers was probably the one thing

1:17:49

that I balked at. And

1:17:51

I said, Vince, I don't want to do this. And

1:17:57

it was a way to. like,

1:18:00

Hey, Jerry, we took your idea. Okay.

1:18:06

On Vince's part to

1:18:08

me, it was, it's a shitty idea. It's

1:18:11

not an original character. I'm doing a

1:18:13

ripoff of dusty. And

1:18:15

then to go further, if you

1:18:17

want me to go further with it, I'll

1:18:19

do a caricature of, of the

1:18:22

ripoff of dusty and go way the fuck over

1:18:24

the top with it. But

1:18:26

no matter what I do, it's

1:18:29

going to be, they're doing dusty.

1:18:33

You can't, you can't, when

1:18:35

you start like this baby, get fucking like

1:18:37

a monkey and Rio Rogers is here looking

1:18:39

for my, looking for my horse trigger. Gail,

1:18:41

Gail, put my horse on up here. Yeah,

1:18:43

baby. You're doing that. Everybody's talking

1:18:46

to that American dream, dusty roads. He

1:18:50

says, I get it, but we'll do it. It'll

1:18:52

work. And with me, we can play off of

1:18:54

each other like we do normally. Okay.

1:18:59

But how do I,

1:19:02

you know, on cameras, what do I do?

1:19:05

That's when we came up with the,

1:19:08

the fuman chew, I didn't shave and

1:19:11

I put on a fake mustache cause

1:19:13

I couldn't grow a mustache, couldn't, I sure as

1:19:15

hell couldn't grow a mustache in, in

1:19:17

whatever a week's time. So I had

1:19:19

a fake fuman chew mustache instead

1:19:22

of cowboy hat or a baseball cat

1:19:24

backwards, I wore Terry

1:19:26

funks chaps. Those are my

1:19:28

shops, Pritchard dusty stole those

1:19:30

from me. And

1:19:32

then he gave them to

1:19:34

you and you gave them

1:19:36

to Tom, but they're mine. And I

1:19:38

don't know where the, actually Vince was

1:19:41

the last person that wore them. And

1:19:44

it was just silly. It was

1:19:46

fucking stupid. It, it, it was

1:19:48

terrible. And I called dusty and

1:19:51

I said, Hey, dream, just wanted to let you

1:19:53

know. Uh,

1:19:55

going to be doing a character character's name

1:19:57

is Rio Rogers. I am

1:19:59

going to. trade this character, Rio Rogers,

1:20:02

and he's going to sound an awful lot like you.

1:20:05

He's a pug in the head. You do what it is you think

1:20:08

you need to do. I said,

1:20:10

well, it's not my idea, but

1:20:13

out of respect to you, I, if

1:20:16

you said Bruce don't do it, that

1:20:19

would probably carry a lot of weight with Vince.

1:20:21

And he wouldn't do it. He

1:20:24

goes, you do what it is you need to do. Make

1:20:27

your family some money. If you're making your family the

1:20:29

money, you're making fun of me, then go for it.

1:20:31

So I'm not making fun of you. Um,

1:20:34

it's a parody. Um, he

1:20:36

just kept telling me, you know, do it, just

1:20:39

do it. Do what you're going to do. And

1:20:42

I told Vince, this was Dusty's

1:20:45

reaction. Great. He loves it. Oh

1:20:48

my God. He's gonna love this

1:20:50

bros. And we did it

1:20:52

and it positively fucking sucked. There

1:20:55

was no rhyme or reason to it.

1:20:57

It was difficult to do color with

1:21:00

that character and that voice. Um,

1:21:03

and, and after you've seen it once the

1:21:06

jig is up. Right. It's

1:21:09

not entertaining the second time. It's

1:21:11

not funny. Is that cute? It's

1:21:13

just monotonous. So,

1:21:16

uh, that's it. It's I

1:21:19

to say it sucked would

1:21:21

be an understatement. And I

1:21:25

hate critiquing myself, but that sucked.

1:21:29

Bad. I read the other day

1:21:31

that, uh, Cody Rhodes

1:21:34

absolutely hates when anybody does a

1:21:36

dusty impression. And whenever someone's

1:21:39

telling him a dusty story, if they

1:21:41

start using a

1:21:43

dusty voice, he just walks away. And he

1:21:45

says the only two people who he thinks

1:21:47

have a good dusty impression are you and

1:21:49

Paul Heyman. Now here's what I want

1:21:51

to know. Can

1:21:54

we have you do a dusty impression as

1:21:56

Paul Heyman. I

1:22:00

know I just went I know

1:22:03

what the fuck come on Well,

1:22:07

sir if I may have another vita

1:22:09

no see cuz then I go into

1:22:11

my dust this thing there if you

1:22:13

will sir That is not how he

1:22:15

says it. He says get funky like

1:22:17

a monkey sir. I may have no

1:22:19

I go my god It's like inception

1:22:21

of impressions is it not yeah, that's

1:22:23

that's God. I mean Bruce doing Paul

1:22:25

doing dusty Yeah,

1:22:27

that would be I don't know I could do that And

1:22:30

I don't also don't know if I've ever heard Paul

1:22:33

do dusty and Always,

1:22:36

you know whenever I would greet when Cody came

1:22:38

in I would always greet

1:22:41

Cody as Good

1:22:43

afternoon Cody Riley Reynolds Junior

1:22:46

the third on the fourth day

1:22:48

if you will babies and that's

1:22:50

he was always Cody Riley Ronald

1:22:52

Junior the third Or

1:22:55

the second whatever number you won't be baby. He's

1:22:57

gone with it Now

1:22:59

let's talk a little bit about what

1:23:01

Lawler is doing next here He

1:23:04

is going to continue to wrestle for the

1:23:06

USWA in Memphis and the rest

1:23:08

of the territory With the exception

1:23:10

of Louisville of course where the alleged incident

1:23:12

took place This

1:23:14

is directly from the observer both Lawler and

1:23:16

the girl a front row regular at the

1:23:19

matches described by both Lawler and others as

1:23:21

a groupie That the indictments

1:23:23

are related to have been banned by

1:23:25

the management of the Louisville gardens from

1:23:27

the building for at least the past

1:23:29

several weeks when police informed

1:23:32

management of the investigation and potential

1:23:34

charges The second degree

1:23:36

rape charge which is statutory other

1:23:39

than a forced rape charge

1:23:41

along with three second-degree sodomy

1:23:43

Charges are felonies and carry

1:23:45

possible prison sentences of

1:23:47

five to ten years apiece The

1:23:50

harassment of a witness charge is a

1:23:52

misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one

1:23:54

year in prison and a five hundred

1:23:56

dollar fine This is something I

1:23:58

never thought I would talk about on a wrestling podcast podcast,

1:24:00

but when they're saying second degree

1:24:02

sodomy, they're referring to oral sex. Uh,

1:24:05

the grand jury indictment on the four

1:24:08

felony charges are related to alleged encounters

1:24:10

in Louisville hotel rooms on June 6th

1:24:12

and July 7th of this year. The

1:24:15

harassment charge alleged that on October

1:24:17

4th, Lawler quote, engaged

1:24:19

in misleading or unlawful conduct intended to

1:24:22

dissuade a person who he believes may

1:24:24

be called as a witness from

1:24:26

causing a criminal prosecution to

1:24:28

be sought or instituted in

1:24:30

quote, according to a story

1:24:33

in Saturday's Louisville courier journal. The

1:24:35

charge is not related to the alleged victim of

1:24:37

the sex crimes. Lawler has been indicted for, but

1:24:39

related to a 14 year old girl who may

1:24:42

have been the first person to go to the

1:24:44

authorities related to these charges. So

1:24:47

this thing is, uh, this

1:24:49

is real deal trouble here for

1:24:51

Jerry Lawler. Are you guys,

1:24:53

how are you keeping up with any information

1:24:55

or any sort of updates? Are

1:24:57

you just getting it from the newsletters or

1:24:59

somebody in the office getting reports from the

1:25:01

police department? Are you following the local paper?

1:25:04

Attorney to attorney. Okay. Attorney

1:25:07

to attorney. And then we had, you know,

1:25:09

the attorneys would inform us, would

1:25:12

inform us if there was something to

1:25:14

be informed about, you know, we, we

1:25:17

heard all this stuff, but we didn't dive

1:25:20

deep into it and the

1:25:22

attorneys kept in touch with attorneys and

1:25:24

kept everybody abreast. Detective

1:25:27

Mike Redmond of the

1:25:30

city county crimes against children unit said

1:25:32

no force was used, but the charges

1:25:34

were brought because of the girl's age.

1:25:37

The age of consent in Kentucky is only

1:25:39

16, whereas it's 18. And

1:25:42

most of the rest of the country. So

1:25:44

they run a television news report on

1:25:47

a CBS affiliate in Louisville on Friday

1:25:49

night. And it was centered

1:25:51

around testimony to the grand jury. And

1:25:53

they were talking about the two alleged

1:25:55

incidents in Louisville on June 6th and

1:25:57

July 7th. There was a third incident

1:25:59

in Indiana. on May 26th and

1:26:02

the television report focused on the testimony of

1:26:04

one of the two girls who reportedly told

1:26:06

the grand jury, quote, as soon

1:26:08

as we walked into Lawler's room, he said, let's

1:26:10

get naked. We took off all

1:26:13

of our clothes and got into bed and we

1:26:16

had sex while we were

1:26:18

watching cartoons. According to

1:26:20

the testimony after the alleged encounter, Lawler

1:26:22

took the two girls to value city

1:26:24

and Taco Bell. A

1:26:26

total of 17 people, including Jerry Lawler

1:26:28

were called to testify on Friday. And

1:26:32

that led to the five indictments, which took

1:26:34

the grand jury just 10 minutes to vote

1:26:36

on. Not

1:26:38

good news here. Uh, according to the

1:26:41

Grimm's report, a second wrestler, Bill Martin,

1:26:43

who formerly worked for the USWA as

1:26:45

young stallion, Bill Marino was also linked

1:26:47

to the case and testimony, but he wasn't indicted.

1:26:50

And outside of the courtroom, Lawler was interviewed by

1:26:52

the station saying the king is fighting back, the

1:26:54

king is not going to take this line down.

1:26:57

The girls were lying. And

1:26:59

Lawler has told reporters that he had

1:27:01

a taped television or telephone conversation, which

1:27:04

he says would exonerate him. I'm

1:27:07

sure we're going to cover this in, um, in

1:27:09

more detail on the Lawler episode, but

1:27:13

this initial testimony and hearing that

1:27:15

there's going to be this indictment,

1:27:18

I mean, immediately, I mean, they only deliver a

1:27:20

deliberated 10 minutes before they say, Oh yeah, we

1:27:22

need to press forward on this. This

1:27:25

has to be something that has everyone

1:27:27

in wrestling on notice, not

1:27:29

just Lawler, but I mean,

1:27:32

this is going to have ripple effects throughout the entire

1:27:34

industry, wouldn't it? I, I

1:27:36

would think so. I think that people, you

1:27:38

know, are looking at it and going,

1:27:40

what, first of all, what the hell,

1:27:43

but second of all, if

1:27:46

there were those rumors and innuendos and different

1:27:48

things that were going on in different parts

1:27:50

of the country that, yeah,

1:27:53

maybe you need to clean up your act a little bit. And

1:27:56

I think that that was a wake up call for

1:27:58

a lot of people. So

1:28:01

there's a phone call between Jerry Lawler

1:28:03

and Wade Killer. That gets picked up

1:28:05

in the news where Lawler said

1:28:08

something like, this was a situation where

1:28:10

a couple of young wrestling groupies were

1:28:12

bragging about some supposed sexual conquest to

1:28:14

some friends of theirs and

1:28:16

it snowballed from there and

1:28:18

as it was relayed from one person to

1:28:20

another and my name was dropped in

1:28:22

among other names as having been with

1:28:24

these girls and Lawler told Wade each

1:28:26

and every one of these allegations are false.

1:28:29

They'll be proven false in a court of law. This

1:28:32

is a case of a couple of girls

1:28:34

who are wrestling groupies who told another party

1:28:36

about a supposed sexual conquest. This party went

1:28:38

to authorities. The authorities then came to

1:28:40

me. I volunteered to tell my side

1:28:42

of the story to a grand jury, but when I

1:28:44

was in front of the grand jury, I didn't get to tell my

1:28:46

side of the story and what I

1:28:49

know about the situation. If

1:28:52

it were you, would you

1:28:54

have continued

1:28:56

to put yourself on

1:28:59

television, not in a, in

1:29:01

a, in a news story type of way,

1:29:03

but I mean, he's still on USWA TV,

1:29:05

he's still working the shows. In

1:29:09

your opinion, good move, bad

1:29:11

move. In my opinion, I

1:29:13

wouldn't have put, no, I wouldn't have continued to be

1:29:15

on television and I would want to get it behind

1:29:18

me as quickly as possible, but

1:29:21

I wouldn't put myself out there to be in

1:29:24

a fictitious storyline that is

1:29:27

perceived as real. Um,

1:29:29

no, I wouldn't have done that. Nor

1:29:32

would I have spoken to newspapers or

1:29:34

dirt sheets. I just let my lawyer

1:29:36

do it all. And because unfortunately there's

1:29:38

not a lot, no matter what you

1:29:40

say or do. At

1:29:42

some point it comes back

1:29:44

to bite you. And that's why people don't

1:29:47

understand sometimes, man, let it go.

1:29:50

If it gets to the legal point where

1:29:52

you're dealing with lawyers and all this other

1:29:54

shit, let them do the talking, go

1:29:56

on your money. Check

1:29:58

me up about the law. way this changed

1:30:01

perceptions, a lawler within the

1:30:03

company. I know you said Vince

1:30:05

was just sort of throwing his hands up saying, I

1:30:07

don't want to know and go fix it. And if

1:30:10

you get it settled, no problem. Come

1:30:12

back. He's still relatively new in

1:30:14

the company, but we've heard a lot

1:30:16

of guys, you know, didn't have the best experience working

1:30:18

that Memphis territory. And allegedly when he comes in, some

1:30:20

guys are wanting to stop his crown. Other guys are

1:30:23

wanting to take a shit in the hat. Uh,

1:30:26

when this comes out. This

1:30:28

feels like something where maybe the office is sort

1:30:30

of tightlipped, but the boys are going to have

1:30:33

a field day with this story or they're not

1:30:36

probably so, you know, but Vince is the

1:30:38

type of person that he is going to

1:30:40

judge you on how you treat him and

1:30:42

how you work with him one-on-one, he, he

1:30:44

doesn't take a lot of things, you

1:30:47

know, especially rumored innuendo, he doesn't take

1:30:49

a lot of that into account. He

1:30:51

judges someone on a one-on-one

1:30:53

basis and how they deal in

1:30:56

this environment, not how they deal

1:30:58

outside in a different environment. So

1:31:01

people get the benefit of the doubt with Vince.

1:31:03

And that's what he was doing with Lawler. Lawler's

1:31:07

attorney, of course, is, is pushing that,

1:31:10

you know, this is all trumped

1:31:12

up make believe from the 13 year

1:31:15

old Louisville girl and her mother. Uh,

1:31:18

who was the third party that Lawler was referring

1:31:20

to. Um,

1:31:22

after the arraignment Lawler, of course,

1:31:24

pled not guilty there to all five

1:31:26

charges, but none of the charges

1:31:28

were dropped. So he post bond only a

1:31:31

thousand bucks. And then he

1:31:33

returns to Memphis for largely positive press,

1:31:35

which I think in hindsight, it's kind

1:31:37

of shocking, but that's what happened. And

1:31:41

later in an interview with the pro wrestling torch,

1:31:44

he said that, you know, he

1:31:46

expected the charges to be dropped very

1:31:48

quickly as soon as the next day.

1:31:51

So it's written in the observer that

1:31:53

the WWF officials have decided that Lawler

1:31:56

would return to both his wrestling and

1:31:58

announcing duties with the group. If,

1:32:00

or when he's absolved of all charges, just as you

1:32:02

said, but with word

1:32:05

throughout wrestling on Sunday, sort of

1:32:08

circulating that Lawler had already been cleared,

1:32:11

the talk was that he might be back

1:32:13

for survivor series after all. And

1:32:16

a lot of this comes out because

1:32:19

quote, the young lady says this never happened.

1:32:21

It just got blown out of proportion. And

1:32:24

when she tried to stop the prosecution, the authorities

1:32:26

did not want to. They didn't want to hear

1:32:28

the truth. And

1:32:30

Meltzer would say a press time, a Louisville station

1:32:32

had already taped an interview with the older brother of

1:32:34

the alleged victim, which the station was taking to

1:32:36

lawyers to decide whether or not it could air since

1:32:38

the older brother was still under 18 and

1:32:41

Massey says that Lawler had given the girl

1:32:43

and her mother nothing in exchange for the

1:32:46

statement and that no civil suits had been

1:32:48

filed in either direction. And there

1:32:50

was absolutely no monetary settlement.

1:32:53

So this a field, this

1:32:56

feels like a sort of false

1:32:58

alarm here. When

1:33:00

you guys hear, you

1:33:02

know, prematurely Lawler has been

1:33:04

cleared and

1:33:06

it does look like these charges are going to

1:33:08

go away. Is there

1:33:10

a consideration of reintroducing him back

1:33:13

into survivor series? Or at that point, since you'd pivoted

1:33:15

to Sean, you were going to see that through no

1:33:17

matter what. We'd already made

1:33:19

the pivot. We're just going to see

1:33:21

it through and then bring Jerry back

1:33:23

to bring him back right immediately after.

1:33:26

We, first of all, we need to make sure

1:33:28

that everything was dropped and there were no pending

1:33:31

charges or they weren't going to come back with

1:33:33

some other, uh, charge

1:33:35

later on. So we

1:33:37

had already made the change to Sean. We didn't

1:33:39

want to flop back and forth

1:33:41

and back and forth. There was consideration of

1:33:43

making Lawler one of the nights, you

1:33:46

know, put him in the hood

1:33:48

and have it that way.

1:33:50

But Vince decided against it and didn't want to

1:33:52

use him just yet. As

1:33:55

if this wasn't enough, McMahon

1:33:57

and Titan sports were arranged on Tuesday

1:33:59

morning, November. 23rd in Brooklyn,

1:34:02

McMahon would plead not guilty on all charges and is released

1:34:04

on a $250,000 bond and a trial date was set for

1:34:06

May 2nd, 1994. And this comes out

1:34:09

of course

1:34:14

what we're talking about is the steroid trial.

1:34:17

The charges against McMahon were conspiracy to

1:34:20

distribute anabolic steroids and to defraud the

1:34:22

United States Food and Drug Administration from

1:34:25

the period of 1985 through February

1:34:27

of 91. That was a maximum penalty of

1:34:30

five years in prison. Illegal

1:34:32

possession of anabolic steroids with the intent

1:34:34

to distribute. That was on

1:34:36

October 24th, 1989 and that had a

1:34:38

maximum penalty of three years in prison.

1:34:41

And then there were personal fines against

1:34:43

Vince McMahon for both charges for $500,000.

1:34:45

And here are the charges against Titan

1:34:48

Sports. Conspiracy to distribute

1:34:50

anabolic steroids and to defraud the United

1:34:52

States Food and Drug Administration $500,000 fine.

1:34:56

Illegal possession of

1:34:58

anabolic steroids with the intent to distribute.

1:35:00

Again October 24th, 1989, a half

1:35:03

a million dollar fine. And an

1:35:05

additional maximum penalty against Titan Sports

1:35:07

for one or both counts. Forfeiture

1:35:09

of the land, office building, and

1:35:11

everything in it located at

1:35:14

1241 East Main Street in Stanford aka

1:35:16

Titan Towers. And the

1:35:18

estimated value of the office building even back

1:35:20

then was nine and a half million dollars.

1:35:24

So as if all of

1:35:26

this is not enough, business is

1:35:28

down, your top guy

1:35:30

is in trouble for allegedly raping

1:35:32

a 13 year old and

1:35:35

now you yourself have been indicted

1:35:38

as well as your company and they

1:35:40

want a boatload of money and to send

1:35:42

you to prison and seize your office. Is

1:35:45

this the worst month in the history of

1:35:47

WWF? Well,

1:35:50

it's a good one, man. That's for damn sure. You know,

1:35:53

Vince, we knew the indictment was coming.

1:35:55

We just didn't know when and Vince

1:35:57

had actually gone down. to

1:36:00

the federal prosecutor's office and tried

1:36:02

to talk to her and say, Hey, here I

1:36:04

am. You want to interview me? You want to

1:36:06

ask me questions? You want to talk to me?

1:36:09

Let's do it. I'm standing here

1:36:11

right now. Would you please, can

1:36:13

we set up an appointment? Can we talk now?

1:36:17

And the prosecutor refused to meet with Vince,

1:36:19

refused to set up a time and or

1:36:21

an appointment to

1:36:23

talk to Vince about these alleged charges that

1:36:25

they were working up against

1:36:27

him. Now they

1:36:30

sure as fuck could go talk to everybody else, but

1:36:33

they didn't want to talk to the guy that they

1:36:35

were accusing of all this yet. So

1:36:38

it was, it was a very trying

1:36:40

time and, and it was a sad

1:36:42

time for us with all this, this

1:36:44

stuff coming down, but you

1:36:46

just put your head down and move forward.

1:36:49

It's all you can do. You, you can

1:36:51

sit there and cry about it and say,

1:36:53

woe is me and this is terrible. This is

1:36:55

the shit. Or let's

1:36:58

take a look at the Royal rumble. Move

1:37:00

on. Uh,

1:37:04

it's an interesting thing, man. McMahon is

1:37:06

going to issue a statement through his

1:37:09

law, through his lawyers, not lawless, where

1:37:12

he says, uh, the government's prosecutors are quote,

1:37:14

now trying to make me responsible for what

1:37:16

the doctor did. I did no such thing.

1:37:18

Of course he's talking about as a hoary

1:37:20

in there. He

1:37:22

also says, quote, to turn my personal

1:37:25

use into a crime, they claim I

1:37:27

shared some of those steroids with a

1:37:29

friend and that somehow made me a

1:37:31

dealer. End quote. What's

1:37:34

a, I know you're inside the bubble, but

1:37:37

when you see, Hey, business down

1:37:39

a little bit, whole COVID is gone. You

1:37:42

know, their top act is indicted

1:37:44

on rape stuff. And now the steroid

1:37:46

thing are people thinking, Hey, this

1:37:49

is the end of WWF. I

1:37:52

think that there were quite a

1:37:54

few people definitely outside of

1:37:57

Titan sports and outside of the WWE. UF

1:38:00

that felt this, this is the, the

1:38:03

death blow. We're done. You

1:38:05

know, there we're going out of business.

1:38:07

Hogan's not there. They're going downhill. Their

1:38:10

house shows aren't drawing. Uh,

1:38:13

they've got one guy that's

1:38:16

raping little kids and another

1:38:18

guy distributing steroids. Um,

1:38:20

yeah, they're done. I think that

1:38:22

was a scuttle, but outside of everything

1:38:25

for those that were inside next

1:38:27

to it, and you know, especially

1:38:30

on the indictment and all of the

1:38:32

stuff with the steroids and what the government

1:38:35

was doing and who had actually

1:38:37

spoken to the government, you're thinking,

1:38:40

this is a fucking witch hunt. They

1:38:42

have nothing that this, this

1:38:44

is crazy. So there

1:38:46

was, there was a lot of fight in us. It's,

1:38:51

uh, it's interesting because this is really the first time

1:38:53

that I think a lot of us had

1:38:56

Jerry McDivitt on the radar as

1:38:59

McMahon's attorney. And he

1:39:01

was quoted in the New York daily

1:39:03

news as saying these charges are quote.

1:39:06

Cockamamie are going

1:39:08

back into ancient and revisionist history to

1:39:10

fashion and indictment against Vince McMahon. And

1:39:13

this story goes everywhere, man. NBC,

1:39:17

ABC, ESPN, CNN, prime

1:39:19

time live. Obviously it's

1:39:21

all over New York. It's on stuff like the

1:39:23

New York post. It's even on the

1:39:25

rags like inside edition and

1:39:29

people are being quoted and everybody's got an

1:39:31

opinion on this. Of course, um, including

1:39:34

Ken Patera where he says everybody use steroids.

1:39:37

And if you didn't use them, you couldn't

1:39:39

work for Vince McMahon, Craig

1:39:41

Peters or prayer wrestling illustrated says, I

1:39:43

don't know if McMahon gave wrestler steroids,

1:39:45

but there was an implicit message about

1:39:48

the bigger the bodies, the more impressive the

1:39:50

physique, the better chance you have

1:39:52

for getting a job with WWF and

1:39:55

ultimate warriors even quoted assignment, man, never told

1:39:57

him to use steroids, but the road schedule.

1:40:00

and pressure to maintain the Ultimate Warrior

1:40:02

character encouraged him to take advantage of

1:40:04

every edge, including steroids. And

1:40:07

of course Vince is saying,

1:40:10

essentially, hey with everybody who's worked for

1:40:12

me and it didn't go well, you know, they

1:40:14

no longer work for me, there'd be

1:40:16

a lot of guys saying yeah he did it to

1:40:18

me too, and that hasn't happened. This

1:40:22

is the most challenging

1:40:24

thing that's ever hit the company and

1:40:26

obviously we've covered it in

1:40:28

our archives, it's something to wrestle.com,

1:40:32

but we're back to sort of where we started

1:40:34

at the beginning of this show. A lot of

1:40:36

this centers around Hulk Hogan. The

1:40:38

New York Daily News names him as

1:40:40

the unidentified WBF performer known to the

1:40:42

grand jury who allegedly was supplied anabolic

1:40:45

steroids from Titan Sports and Vince McMahon

1:40:48

between on or around March of 88 and October of

1:40:50

89. And we've covered that in

1:40:56

our archives if you want to go check it out, but

1:41:00

I mean at this point are you thinking I

1:41:04

might need to update my resume? No,

1:41:09

because we felt that, you know, we were making

1:41:12

all the inroads to continue on and

1:41:14

Vince wasn't closing the

1:41:16

company and shutting down was never an option.

1:41:20

To plan for events

1:41:23

were to go into the pen for

1:41:26

a few years, yeah we discussed that, we

1:41:28

discussed how everybody would

1:41:30

continue to do their jobs and

1:41:33

Linda would assume the role as

1:41:35

the head of the company, but that everyone else was just expected to do

1:41:37

their jobs and the roles that they were hired

1:41:40

to do. So that was easy, that's what

1:41:42

we were doing and we just kept going.

1:41:49

We kept our head down and the

1:41:51

vision and the goal was to keep the company

1:41:53

opening and continue to do business. All

1:41:57

right, let's talk about Stan Lane of

1:41:59

the Midnight Express and fabulous ones tag

1:42:01

team fame. He was brought

1:42:03

in as an announcer during this time. Uh,

1:42:06

how does that come to be? And how do you think

1:42:08

he did? Stan,

1:42:11

uh, came up and Stan had been

1:42:13

part of the heavenly bodies. Was he

1:42:15

the heavenly body or the new midnight

1:42:17

express? I don't even remember which, but

1:42:20

Stan had retired from active wrestling and he

1:42:22

had a good look at a good gift

1:42:24

to gap. We brought Stan up to

1:42:27

be a possibly a play

1:42:29

by play guy, but also a interviewer.

1:42:32

Uh, he did okay, but

1:42:35

just wasn't here. Was

1:42:37

this was my favorite, my favorite Stan

1:42:39

Lane story and kind of analogy. We

1:42:42

would use Stan to

1:42:45

be the interviewer when we would bring

1:42:48

people in for auditions. So for

1:42:51

example, you're doing an audition

1:42:53

and you do it with Stan. And

1:42:55

then he would interview you after

1:42:58

the interview was done. Stan

1:43:00

would come up like to me or Vince

1:43:02

or whoever was doing the audition. How did

1:43:05

I do? So

1:43:07

Stan, you've already got a fucking job. Dude,

1:43:09

you're here, you know, helping audition

1:43:11

these people. You're fine, but it

1:43:13

was always, it was a constant.

1:43:16

How did I do? How

1:43:18

was I, do I look good? Um,

1:43:23

Stan was, you know, I just don't

1:43:25

know that Vince was ever really fond