Bonus: Encarnacao Interviews Rick Bassman on WWE's Interest to Purchase PRIDE FC, Eric Bischoff on Pro Wrestling & MMA Business Similarities

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Episode Transcript

(00:05):
This is a short rewind. Thisis a Showdog Radio Network special report.
You're getting beat down? Why you'relistening to the Savage Dog Show. You're
listening to George Jordan Bull eighty eightiestime with Bruce Buffer SRN. Rewind another

(00:35):
seven days in the books in MixedMartial Arts and you know what that means.
It means we're here once again forthe show Dog Radio Network. Rewind.
I'm your host, Jack and Canarcio. I'm glad you could join us
for tonight's special report. Well onApril seventh, MM, a purist,
stay away from your Twitter feed becauseall of those MMA writers, personalities and

(00:57):
fighters that you follow are going tobeach tweeting about professional wrestling. Sunday,
April seventh is the night of thebiggest pro wrestling event of the calendar year,
WWW WrestleMania, an event that bringsinto stark relief the common DNA that
fans and participants of both pro wrestlingand mixed martial arts share. Most of

(01:18):
the prominent MMA writers they were wrestlingfans before they were MMA fans, gleaned
their understanding of the industry from DaveMeltzer's newsletter, which has covered UFC since
nineteen ninety three. Hell It coversthe tourist Sayama's organization. SHOOTO covered the
UWFi all of the pro wrestling organizationsthat eventually sprouted into MMA leagues. Over

(01:40):
the years. Here on Shirdog Radio, I've touched on this indelible connection between
wrestling and MMA at great length,not because I'm some wrestling geek trying to
tuck it in whenever and wherever Ican, but because a grasp of that
industry helps us understand best what MMAis, what it isn't, and where
it's headed. In two thousand andnine, on the Shirtdog Radio twenty for

(02:02):
our charity Marathon, we chopped thistopic up with the aforementioned Dave Meltzer and
Daniel Peuter, a true character who'strafficked in both worlds. In two thousand
and ten, we talked about theintersection of both industries with Don Fry and
Paul Hayman. Last week on theprogram, Tito Ortez told us about how
sitting on the living room floor inhis broken home watching Hulk Hogan as a

(02:23):
kid helped him internalize the ways tomake people notice you. Tonight, seven
days out from WrestleMania MetLife Stadium inthe shadows of New York City. Another
bite at this very nourishing apple,A two part sit down for you.
First promoter Rick Bassman, who spenta career straddling both worlds, presenting MMA
events and pro wrestling shows, guidingthe careers of pro wrestling and MMA fighters

(02:45):
and hybrids of both. Then we'reproud to bring you a chat with former
WCW executive producer Eric Bischoff, whowill help us understand the principles behind how
his organization rose to eclipse the industrygiant that was Vince McMahon's WWF for nearly
two years, ended up worth lessthan two million dollars. Today, he's
a producer at TNA, which istraining King Moe to become a wrestler.

(03:07):
At the same time he's training tofight in bellatur, an experiment we've come
to find that is rot with morecomplications than anyone likely had the gumption to
anticipate. I hope you enjoy theshow, and we begin with Rick Bassman,
who is currently admitst a Kickstarter campaignto fund a book on his incredibly
colorful life and career that I highlyrecommend. You contribute to Rick, welcome

(03:30):
so much to the program. It'sgreat to have you. Now, it's
great being on it here in guys, I don't usually intimidate very easily,
but after that brilliant introduction, I'mgoing to do my best to stay up
with you here. That's right,we're all elevating each other's games here on
the SR end. Well, let'sjump right into what will probably provide the
basis for a lot of what we'lltalk about. Rick, You're just so

(03:53):
perfectly positioned to talk about how progressingan MMA is the same in many ways
in other ways that it's different.Tell me about the time that Vince McMahon
hired you to help him explore gettingin to mixed martial arts. Well,
sure, this is about And onething I commonly talked about in my book
is I'm not good or remembering exactyears, So I'm going to say this

(04:15):
is five or six years ago whenVince and company, mainly prodded by his
son Shane, took a very veryserious look at getting him to mixed martial
arts. Now, this, inmy opinion, was right at the time
where they still could have been competitivewith ufc IS before UFC became the household
name that it is now, andVince apparently was talking internally, well,

(04:39):
if we're going to make this move, or if we're going to contemplate making
this move, who do we talkwith? My name was brought up by
somebody there. I'm still not tothis day sure who it was. Nonetheless,
I ended up on Vince's payroll andthis was up the ww E books
for for whatever reason, but onVince's payroll for Darner a year, going
back and forth from Los Angeles toConnecticut almost monthly to guide the team that

(05:04):
he had selected into putting together theirbusiness plan to get into mixed martial arts.
And at the end of the daythere was a full blown business play
on with the fifty million dollars plusinvestment tad to make the move had they
decided to make the move. Amazing, So what was the opportunity that Vince

(05:24):
saw You mentioned Shane. It's wellknown that Shane really really was into mixed
martial arts throughout the course of histime at WWF, particularly when the you
know, the company exploded in twothousand and five. Chuck Ladell fan I
remember even a profile of Chuck Ladell. I think it was in men's Fitness.
We're right in the middle of theinterview he takes a cell phone call
from Shane McMahon. They kind ofyuck it up talk a little bit about
why the opportunity was there for themat that particular moment. Do you think,

(05:46):
well, I think the opportunity is. There's two very definitive parts of
that. One is, mixed martialarts was just coming into the public consciences
in a very very big way,and UFC didn't quite for lack of a
better term, owned the industry.Yet they were the dominant force, but
it wasn't all them yet. Secondly, WWE or WWF whatever it was at

(06:09):
the time, they had the infrastructure. They understood every and not only understood
it, excelled at every component necessaryto take a serious run at that.
That was everything from talent development toto live events, to pay per view,
to merchandizing and licensing it. Reallyit would have been a plug in
model for them, much much closerto the core of what they did and

(06:32):
do than the football world or thebodybuilding world or the movie world. Ever,
was all businesses that they invested in, very very heavily that they were
a better position at that point intime, in my opinion, to make
a run at it and be verysuccessful at it. And we got very,
very deep into a somewhat unusual businessplan that I think, had they

(06:55):
pulled the trigger, would have workedand absolutely would have given zufa run for
their business plan. Is what I'mparticularly interested in because for a promoter invents
a brilliant promoter, really one ofthe best ever in this country, of
any type of any industry, ofany enterprise, how he handled and reconciled
in his head Rick not being ableto control necessarily who was the star,

(07:18):
right if you're talking movies, ifyou're talking bodybuilding, of course, less
so with football, although they certainlytried, and especially with professional wrestling.
You can control who wins, Youcan control who gets to say what,
you can control who's in the spotlight, and you can sort of engineer the
pieces in a way where the attentionis directed towards the person that you think
has star potential, potential to movenumbers, and absolutely, and I believe

(07:42):
the way that we had it planned, you could have done all of those
things save or controlling who wins.Obviously the rest I believe could have been
done even with guys that lose basedon what say, the Tank habit model,
for instance, Tanking, in myopinion, to a certain point in
time, always stayed relevant despite aa less than stellar record, And it
was the way that he portrayed himself, the way he was portrayed and marketed

(08:05):
and so on and so forth.Let me give you a little bit of
the background on what this plan wasand how it got to where it ended
up. But first a quick aside. It probably was about two thousand and
five. I was at an arenashow somewhere I don't recall where, and
I had been emailing Shane to deathsame guys pull the trigger, get into
MMA. So Shane came up tome, this is before the show started,

(08:28):
and we were hanging out in thearena or backstage, I don't recall
which, and he says, so, so you think we should do this?
And I said yeah. He goes, well, I think we start
by buying pride. And I said, Shane, don't buy pride and he
said, well why not. Andnow this is gonna sound it's gonna sound
a little blasphemous in this day andage, but I'll tell you why.

(08:48):
The first answer I gave him wasthe blasphemy. In a second, the
first answer was, this will soundoverly simplistic, said Shane, you'll never
know what you're buying. Obviously,ww ww is a very sophisticated company,
so they would have done their duediligence and discovery and whatnot. But typically
the Japanese would not divulge what theirassets were, so I knew that WWF

(09:11):
would have been taken down a longroad, only really to find out that
probably didn't have much in the wayof long term, long term assets saved
for their library, which obviously WWFis expert at monetizing. They could have
done something with that, but notat the price tag, not worth the
price tag probably was looking for atthe time. But Shane goes on and
says, Okay, I get that, but they have the world's greatest heavyweights.

(09:35):
Now Here comes the blasphemy. Isaid, Shane, Yeah, but
nobody knows who they are. Now. Keep in mind that when I said
that, I was a huge fanof Pride. I've been back and forth
to Japan several times, and Iwas not only admirer, but probably a
worshiper. Of Meroko, crocop andthe Guara and Fedor and the rest.
But if you if you ran aroundthe streets of Los Angeles to the sports

(09:58):
fans, you know, baseball,basketball, football, you probably have gotten
one and one hundred people at bestwho knew who those guys were at that
point. So Shane says, okay, so what do you do? He
said, Shane, you do whatyou guys do the best. You build
stars. Now ultimately you create andyou build stars. Now Here, here's
gonna here's the plan as we developedit, and the MMA Paris out there

(10:22):
are gonna hate it. But thisis probably the pro wrestling guy in means,
So here it goes. The companywas going to be built on very
very good looking, very articulate,very charismatic, high level b fighters.
No, I know that sounds crazy, but my theory at that point in

(10:43):
time, and I'd be interested toknow your opinion on this, even even
now in twenty and thirteen. Tothe average guy that watches MMA, like
my brother, for instance, youknow, they know a little bit of
what they're watching, but they reallydon't know a camera from a heel hook.
Still, my theory was, ifyou took two very good B level
fighters and match them together. Thatthe average fan wouldn't know the difference between

(11:07):
that and a top A level fight. That was the first part of the
plan. What are your thoughts onthat? I would think, I would
think when you're talking about that viewer, Yes, absolutely, And I think
any viewer who understood MMA, whohad the sophistication on MMA to know the
difference would still watch it. Theywould they would hate it. They would

(11:28):
watch it and critique it. Butyou know, when you get to that
level of understanding of what you're seeingin an mm A cage, there is
no discerning consumer. There is onlythe obsessive consumer, and they'd watch every
second of it. That's what Itold Shane, and Shane vibe with that
argument. And here's where the argumentreally hit home, and it's kind of
a funny story. We were inConnecticut one day at headquarters and we were

(11:48):
in a meeting with five of us. It was myself and Shane and Ed
Kapman, who was ahead of legalat that time, who was a huge
MMA fan, and John Laurenidas whowas ahead of talent for WWD, who
knew nothing about HIMMA, and Vincewho knew less than John knew about it.
So I said, Shane, letme let me test my theory.
And I said Shane and ed,the following is not for you, because

(12:09):
you guys know who's who. Thisis for Vince and for John. So
I put two eight by tens downon the cable in front of him.
One was a feder and the otherone was get named Maverick Von howeg do
you guys know Maverick? It doesn'tring a bell, but an image isn't
coming to mind. Good. It'sactually good you don't know him because it
helps to illustrate where the story isgoing. Good. Maverick's a good friend

(12:31):
of mine, and he would be. He'd be with the average person's idea
of what an MMA fighter looked like. Great body, great face, crazy
piercings, crazy facial tattoos, veryvery very very charismatic and interesting looking guy.
Hell of a body too. Maverickat the time was making about three
to four thousand dollars a fight.This is when Federer was on top making

(12:54):
had hundreds of thousands whatever it washe was making. So I put these
two photos down and I said toVince and to John, I go,
who do you want in your company, and they immediately both said this guy
and they pointed him Everick, Nowyou guys get the point of all this.
You've got a guy who UFC isnot going to try to read.
First of all, you got aguy who's a good, solid, B

(13:15):
level fighter, so he's not goingto cost you much money. And you've
got a guy who you can createand do a huge popular character or villain.
The way that WWE is so goodat doing that was the entire premise
of the company. Wow, Wow, that is you know, I didn't
realize there was that level of complexityto it. Rick, I do recall
the rumors leaking out about WWE consideringthe purchase of Pride. In fact,

(13:41):
if I'm not mistaken, and maybeyou were on the front lines at this
point in time, they actually leakedan item on their own website, wwe
dot com with a Pride logo sayingwe're in talks to buy Pride, and
they were, and I bridged thegap between the two. I sat in
the meetings with Shane in Soaka Kabaraand the Hooman yards Um. Ultimately they
you know, in that one conversationI had with Shane in the arena where

(14:05):
I said, don't buy it.He was somewhat convinced, but not convinced
enough to not get into some exploration. And through the process of exploration they
found out that what I what Ihad said was was true. There really
wasn't much there in the term anassets other than than a library. And
when you say assets, you meanfighter contracts, you mean the only thing

(14:26):
I think of as an asset,Well, yeah, that would have been
it contracts, and in the videolibrary, that was it. And in
terms of the contracts, once againit went back to the heavyweights who would
have wanted a ton of money,who really weren't that marketable at least by
WWE standards, I mean pro coopssomewhat you know, nagera fedor or the
rest at the time or not,you know, Vince McMahon's idea of a

(14:50):
star. And and even that said, the contracts weren't that long term,
so there just wasn't much to buy, So you got the star compression.
I've always, I guess, hadthis impression just by passing glances at you
know, the information we've had abouthow Vince and how Shane looked at the
business. That Shane was gung homm a youthful this is the future,

(15:11):
and Vince just didn't see it.Absolutely correct. Yeah, that's right.
What ultimately was maybe the last thingVince said that you recall about getting into
MMA, the last thing that Iheard, and it wasn't from Vince.
It was from from Ed Coppman,head of legal, who said, you
know, the companies just decided notto make the investment. That was it.

(15:33):
No more explanation than that. Thiswas after nearly a year of back
and forth. You know, itwas a fun time. It was cool
developing the plan. They paid mewell and I'm sorry it didn't go forth.
I think it would have been very, very interesting, and to this
day I'll say that they would havebeen competitive, but oh no, we'll
never know. It's interesting to thinkabout Vince McMahon's gears turning as he considers

(15:58):
an enterprise with you know, becausehe sort of has been involved as a
promotional partner in some boxing matches.It's not like he completely shies away from
the idea of outcomes he can control. But when you talk about a top
to bottom and the may product whereevery fight in every card can't be controlled,
did he ever express thoughts about thatat reservations about that. Yeah,
yeah, he did absolutely very muchthe same way that the same way you're

(16:21):
putting it out there right now.I agreed and I disagreed. The disagreement
was this, I believe, withtheir marketing machinery behind them, that even
a loser in the cage could havebeen turned into a marketing and merchandise and
winner. Did they believe that.They believed it to a degree where it

(16:42):
started to get a little scary.Is And this is something I was concerned
about for the entire process we weredeveloped in the plan is where the line
would have been drawn to distinguish onecompany from the other. You could I
could have just seen Triple Age gettinginvolved in MMA angles and whatnot, and

(17:03):
the line would have been blurred veryvery quickly. And I think that's what
you know in some discussions we had. I think that's how Vince was thinking
insofar as having a degree of controlover how the company was run and perceived.
And what I mean by that isI think he would have overly involved
his wrestlers in the MMA game.And you mean like the first scene on

(17:23):
the first XFL game being the rock. You know, I sound like a
good example, but I don't knowthat one. Yeah. Well, the
very first XFL game started with arock promo about what the XFL was going
to be, and then of courseeventually Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler, the
wrestling announcers, are calling the games. Yeah, not good. Yeah,
I think that would have been aproblem. But then again, you know,

(17:44):
we don't know. We didn't geta chance to find out. Yeah,
it's it's fascinating because if you youknow, for listeners, and there
are a lot of them who understand, you know, kind of the underpinnings
of the wrestling business, particularly themodern WWE. It's it's kind of counterintuitive
in some ways because in a lotof way is more than ever, it
doesn't matter, or at least theway guys are positioned in the WWE,

(18:06):
it doesn't so much matter if youwin or lose matches. In fact,
there seems to be this philosophy thatwe keep everyone roughly even you know,
at a particular level. I mean, I guess the top three, four
or five guys they really don't loseunless it's absolutely necessary to move business.
But underneath that, just the crowdsof guys they trade wins all day.
It's even Steven in that way,and it's almost like in pro wrestling wins

(18:26):
mean little than ever before. Butwhen push comes to shove and you have
to consider MMA wins or everything,well, you're absolutely right, and pro
wrestling wins and losses mean absolutely nothingat all. The last time they try
to make it meaningful was with EricBishop in WCW with the Goldberg winning streak,
which had some meaning behind it untilthey lost Trap. But other than
that, you know, wins don'tmean a thing. It's about how you

(18:48):
create a character and maintain that thatcharacters integrity or popularity or whatnot. And
I was constantly arguing, and notnot not the point counterpoint, but constantly
making the argument while I was therethat if the fighters were handled in a
very particular way, that the losseswouldn't mean that much. Obviously, to

(19:10):
the fan, a loss in MMAis meaningful, you know, on a
whole different level than a pro wrestlingloss. But I still believe that an
MMA loss with stars that we hadwe been building stars there and had those
stars lost, unless they're just gettingdestroyed left and right and embarrassed, I
believe that their marketability could have beenprotected if it was handled carefully. Now,

(19:32):
you're a veteran pro wrestling promoter,Rick, You've scouted and recruited and
brought along some of the great talentsin the history of the industry. You
had a hand and discovering Sting andthe Ultimate Warrior. I mean, even
if you're not a wrestling fan,you've heard of those guys. You played
a part in shepherding along John Cena, who's one of the top names right
now at the WWE. And tohear you say that wins and losses mean
absolutely nothing, I want to kindof debate that a little bit because in

(19:55):
pro wrestling, it always strikes methat when someone really gets over, gets
over to the point where they're aviable headliner, where the fan, that
the consumer will accept them as someoneworth buying on pay per view, worth
watching on cable weekend and week out. Part of that is always winning,
winning, winning, until it sinksin with the people. It's just everybody
that they don't think is ready forthat level. Those people wins and losses

(20:17):
don't matter yet when it comes timeto really make a money player. Vince
McMahon and everybody else at the WWEknows deep down in their DNA that wins
do make a huge difference. Well, ultimately, a top guy has to
win. Now, if he goesout there and loses every time, he's
not going to be a top guy. But let's let's draw a distinction there

(20:37):
as well. And now I don'tI don't follow it that closely anymore pro
wrestling, but I know the mechanismand I know the animals certainly. How
back in the day, when youhad the stars or the champions like Bruno
Sammartino who had eighty eight year streakson top as champion, wins and losses,
men everything you know, get brutallost. The hands would be crushed.

(21:00):
When Hulk Hogan lost, it wasa huge, huge deal because these
guys were built and maintained as superhumanor superheroes. In today's wrestling climate,
when the title belts change hands likepeople change our underwear, you know,
we can get into this and wecan spend the entire hour on this.
Um I'd rather not, But nonetheless, I think if you ask the average

(21:27):
passable wrestling fan, not not theones who buy the pay per views,
but the ones who who tune intoo raw on occasion, who the WWE
champion is, and who the intracontinentalchampion is, and who the tag team
champions are. Well, Hell,I bet as many people would know that
as kids in junior high these daysknow who are a vice president of the
USES. And that's not any I'mtelling you. We can get into debating

(21:49):
the subtleties, and obviously you're you'reexceptionally educated to this, and in a
debate, hell, you might beatme. But to hopefully move on to
another topic, I'm going to sayit doesn't matter because I can't tell you
who the tag team champions are.I can't tell you who the intracontineal champion
is. I'm not even sure whothe heavyweight champion is. And I'm supposed

(22:11):
to know how the hell this businessworks. Yeah, very very true,
very good stuff. Tell us alittle bit about your MMA experience lay the
groundwork for fans who may not befamiliar most fans. No Valor fighting is
maybe your most recent and may venture, but you've worked with so many fighters
over the years. Yeah. Innineteen ninety eight, myself and a guy

(22:32):
named Sean McCully, the older brotherof UFC former UFC heavyweight Justin McCully started
a gym in southern California called ExtremeUniversity, and I'm pretty sure I'm not
positive. I think history would showthat was the first ever mixed martial arts
gym in the state of California.And it was, you know, five

(22:52):
years after the debut of UFC.Let me digress. Rock and roll fans
always love to say I was atWoodstock. I'm a huge rock fan,
and I saw Elvis when I waseleven, I think. But I wasn't
at Woodstock. I was at UFCnumber one, and it was by accident.
I was visiting in Denver, whereI lived for many years. Saw
these ads for these crazy blood sportthing in the newspaper. Looked like something

(23:17):
my friend Zane Breslop would be involvedin. Zane was the WWF promoter for
years in Hulk's Best peal called Zane, and scored two free tickets, went
to this awful, half ful buildingand just got hooked the second I saw
Ken Shamrock make his entrance like Inever heard of to that date. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna back up alittle bit just to frame why I got

(23:37):
so into it so quickly. Igrew up very much as a superhero and
comic book fan and always wondered whowas tougher between you know, Batman in
Greenland, and that that continued whenI got into wrestling. I thought wrestling
was real when I first got intoit. Later in the hull Kogan era,
I still always when I understood whatthe score was, still always understoo

(24:00):
what was curious to who the realtoughest guy was. And about that time
started hearing rumors of this crazy Braziliangroup of brothers exaggerated obviously living in the
jungles of Brazil, who could chokeout any human being on earth. And
in nineteen ninety three I find myselfat the Ultimate Fighting Championships. This skinny
Brazilian guy comes out chokes everybody outand I realized that was one of the

(24:23):
brothers I'd heard about in legend forall these years, and I got hooked
immediately watched every single event. Thatwas the only one I saw live up
until UFC thirteen, which I waspart of, and in following it,
saw that it was going to explodeand decided to open a gym, sought

(24:44):
trainers out. In about six monthperiod of time, we had five hundred
members. We were doing very verywell. I started a pro wrestling program
there that took off. Decided toget a Los Angeles location as well.
Opened my l location at a placecalled Raw. Became friendly with the guy
who owned a name, Rico Chiparelli. I'm sure you're sure you know Rico

(25:07):
and a wrestling That's the one Ricosays to me. One day. He
goes, Rick, I've got thesetwo guys trying to take care of I'm
not a manager type you are.These guys are driving me ff and crazy.
Let me introduce you and see ifyou might be interested in getting into
this aspect of it. So Ricointroduced me to Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman,

(25:27):
and we went out, spent abit of time together, signed them
to management contracts, and boom.That's how I got started. And I
had a tiny little Jim and MissionViejo, and it was managing who arguably
were the top two heavyweights in theworld at that time. So that that
was my entry into the business,and then Olive Taktarav followed quickly on the

(25:48):
heels of that, and overnight Iwas managing three of the very top guys
in the world, traveling back andforth to Japan getting to know the game,
and then years later, when wehad fought and fought to get the
Athletic Commission behind mixed martial arts,I was the very first promoter issued a
license in in California to promote mixedmartial arts. So I've been I've been

(26:11):
in that for a long long timeas well, and I've gotten not as
deep a history in MMA as Ido in pro wrestling, but but an
awfuy deep history. Nonetheless, letme make sure I have the timeline straight.
Let's just Mark Coleman, for example. Are we talking Mark Coleman,
UFC Heavyweight Champion. Are we talkingMark Coleman two thousand Pride Grand Prix,
Mark Coleman between that period of time? Okay, that's when I first That's

(26:34):
when I first picked Mark up.By the way, Mark called me about
an hour ago, first time I'vetalked to him in in about a year.
We had a pretty hysterical conversation.I'll have to recount a little bit
of that in a moment if weget the chance. But no, Mark
was between he wasn't champion any longer. What I did with Mark very very
quickly has brought him to Pride.I did his first deal of Pride for

(26:56):
him, got him a huge moneydeal. And here here's a rage between
MMA and pro Wrestling. Got hima huge money deal to do a job
for Takata over there when everybody thoughtit was a shoot. And I traveled
with Mark there and Mark remember Iremember this match well, I was.
I was his cornerman. It's alla work, obviously is he don't have

(27:17):
to do much as a corner.But what I did do, and this
is pretty funny, is you alwayssee the corner guys, obviously or naturally
doing what they can to give theirguys guidance to win the match. Mark
had a front facelock on Takata,who looked like he was about to go
out. So as a cornerman,I'm yelling to Mark to let up on
his opponents so he didn't beat him. So little a little bit of the

(27:41):
the opposite experience. I was justpicturing h never leaving Japan. Had that
match knock on the way they wantedit to go, put him asleep.
They thought you double crossed him.Yeah, good, didn't looked like it
was head in that direction too.That was Mark's first match ever as a
pro wrestler, So he didn't reallyget to Mark. Mark was a pool.
How did he How did he aboutgoing in there and doing a job?
Breck? You know, Mark,Mark's a lot of people don't give

(28:06):
him credit for his intelligence. Certainlyhe has a particular image, much the
way Tank Abbott does, who happensto be one of those smartest guys I've
ever met. Mark understood right awayimmediately that it was business and like a
lot of guys at that point intime, you know, we have a
fledgling sport. Despite the factor thechampion of the world and people think you're

(28:26):
a multi billionaire, that these guyswere struggling to pay the rent for one
month to the next. And thekind of money I was able to negotiate
for Mark to go over and dowhat he did was far more money than
market ever seen or imagine in hislife at that point in time. So,
you know, I don't want tomake Mark or myself or anybody sound

(28:48):
a certain way where we, youknow, sacrifice integrity from at a certain
point, it's it's business and youmake the right move. He had two
small children, and he did whatwas right for him and his family.
He came to Grips with a veryvery quickly and ultimately became a very good
pro wrestler and could have been agreat one. So the get go.

(29:08):
Yeah, you mentioned you just spoketo him. I know he recently underwent
surgery, announced his retirement, orat least was about to undergo surgery.
How's he doing? Mark? Soundsgreat. It was really really good to
hear from him. And the reasonhe called me this is kind of funny.
I'm gonna get a kind of anot so sly plug in there from
my book and my Kickstarter. Knowingthat I was doing this interview tonight,

(29:30):
I emailed Mark this morning and Markher and Olegg and Marco Huas and Boss
Rutten and Dan Severn and Don Fryand Kimo and Kank and Ken Shamrock,
how's out for some name dropping?And yes, I emailed these guys and
Bob Sapp and Butterbeen and I emailedthese guys saying, guys, I'm going
on sure dog tonight. Let mebe able to say that you made a

(29:53):
pledge to my kickstarter a while I'mon the show. So that's why Mark
called me back, and we gotinto a very funny conversation. You know,
I've, as you'll see in mybook when it comes out, I've
done so many freaking crazy things inmy lifetime and experienced so many that I
think I've forgotten more than then I'veactually remembered to include in the book.

(30:15):
Mark said to me on the phonetoday, He goes, Rick, He
goes, I know we didn't alwayssee ida eye, and that's an understatement,
he said. But I've got lovefor you and I've got respect for
you. He goes, you arethe first person to ever yell at me
as an adult. And Mark proceededto tell me how I completely read them
out one side up and down theother in front of a gym full of

(30:37):
people, and I have no recollectionabout whatsoever. So it's sunk in with
him that that's great. That's greatto hear that he's doing well, and
it's great to hear that you canmaintain those connections because um that those were
the wild West days, Rick,that cast of characters you just listed off,
I mean, they they were outthere, they were pioneers, they

(30:59):
were feeling their way around in thedark. As far as what is this
fighting thing, what does it allamount to, am I just supposed to
take as much money as I canand run What is this sport? Is
it going to be around in twoyears? It was a much It was
probably a much different field than today, where you feel like you really have
MMA feels like it has a culturalit has a cultural hook. Now it's

(31:19):
tethered somewhat to the sports culture andit's a little more stable in that way.
Oh God, it's it's it's nightand day. It was fun back,
I mean it's fun now, butit was different kind of fun then.
It was a day of pioneers inthe wild West, which I think
you said nobody really understood what itwas all about or what they were in.
I mean, Don Fry was outthere having fun. Chemo was out

(31:42):
there because someone dragged him there abiostop knot and stuck him in the cage.
I think the only guys that reallywere looking forward at that point that
had a grasp on it, andin the group of guys that I mentioned
at least were Ken Shamrock and DanSevern. You know, Kenner come up
in Japan. He kind of knewwhat it could be and he had an
eye on a long career, andhe was thinking about what he was doing,

(32:04):
and you know, Dan just beingDan. He's a very analytical,
very smart business man, and hesaw a long career in a sport that
he knew or thought would explode,and had hoped he could hang in there
long enough to be relevant. Youknow, Wild it caught fire. Everybody
else's just in their winging it,no doubt, Bens. You mentioned the

(32:24):
names you mentioned Rick. It's fascinatingbecause we're hitting this point now, this
period where we're really seeing the firstwave of MMA headliners kind of transition into
post fighting life. It's always beensomething I've really been interested to see happen,
because it's not always a graceful transitionout of pro wrestling for a lot
of guys if they make it toretirement. I mean, it is a

(32:45):
very very very difficult business in alot of ways on the body of the
money. But look, analy I'mstarting to rupt you blitz. Let me
analyze this statement real quickly. Nota very graceful transition for a lot of
guys. Let's let's reward that tosay, a horrible transition for almost everybody.
There. You go, well,I'm glad you said it. Yeah,

(33:05):
regrettably. That's well, you knowwhat, I speak the truth and
in a lot of people don't likeme for it. But hey, with
any luck, that's why my bookwill be a bestseller, we'll find out.
Yeah, yeah, at least theydon't think you're pulling punches. They
yeah, yeah, no, nopun intended, right, but no yeah
no. Well, contrast then,having seen so many guys step out of
pro wrestling um in awful shape.We're seeing Coleman, We're seeing Shamrock,

(33:30):
although he's still you know, takingfights apparently, we've seen Severn retire.
What of these guys, what kindof retirement will they have? What?
What? How did they end upafter a lifetime in this developing sport?
Oh gosh, you mean you're inin you know, where are they announcements?
Yeah? Sores Like a contrast asto like, you know, health

(33:52):
wise, financially wise, there's alot of similarities with some of these tough
luck pro wrestlers. It seems liketo me, we had Tito on last
week, and he did not soundlike a guy who has who feels like
he has a lot to show forall of the time he put in in
the cage. You know, Titois probably the best example of a guy
who who went out at or nearthe top right at the time when you

(34:16):
know the sport is becoming, youknow, becoming mainstream. Now you probably
look at that statement and say,well, that's not true. The sport
was mainstream, you know, threeor four or five years before he went
out. But I'm talking about histransition from being the top guy to to
a guy whose retirement was imminent.Um that the and and and Tito's a

(34:37):
friend. Tino and I've done alot together over the years, and I'll
always admire the hell out of him. Tito in my mind, he may
not believe this right now, andI don't want to digress too much,
but Tito's going to be a starin another field before it's all over for
him. He's just he's got it. He's got that holy factor in charisma
and marketability and all that. Theum, the wave of guys that I
mentioned who you know, we're allgone. A couple will do a few

(35:00):
years before Tito and I don't wantto get into naming individual names. We'll
save that stuff for the book.But they're you know, buying large the
guys, and I hate to sayit because they're all my friends and I
love them all to death, butbuying large, they're they're struggling because they
got into a sport which is very, very brutal and was ultimately going to

(35:21):
take a toll on their bodies.And they did it much like the pro
wrestlers do, without a lot offoresight to what they would do when it
was over, and they were init when there was very little to no
money. You know, I'm notmuch of a sports historian, but it
would not dissimilar to you know,the early era of the NFL. These

(35:42):
guys played for no money, theygot the crap beating out of them,
they retired with their bodies, insome cases their brains damaged, and weren't
prepared to do anything afterwards. Notto mention of time in period where a
lot of top level NFL football playerswould take pro wrestling gigs on the side
because it paid better. That's howlittle the NFL played. That's exactly right,
Yes, yeah, it's it's it'stotally differently. A lot of the

(36:06):
the early era of MMA icons arein the same space. Yeah. One
of the things I want to throwin here, I mentioned that you've done
a fantastic interview already, and I'msure others with the aforementioned Dave Meltzer and
Bryan alva Is over at Wrestling Observer. I listened to it, great great
stuff there, and it got alot of attention, justifiably. So that
interview. One of the things yousaid that I wanted to bring back up

(36:29):
to get your thoughts on a littlebit more considering your life experiences and promotional
experiences, was, um, youwere talking about kind of this formative era
of MMA, and you were saying, this was a time when we thought
the toughest guys on earth were theguys who looked the part. I love
that insight because it's a aspect ofMMA that I think a lot of fans
don't really understand, is the charisma, the look, the role. You've

(36:50):
talked a lot already tonight about thelook and how important that is. Can
you get into look the part andwhat that what that meant at this point
in MMA history? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, of course. You know,
I want to bring up a goodexample, Frankie Edgar, and you're
gonna wonder why I'm bringing that uphere. Here's a guy or Uriah Faber
probably two very good examples of nobody'sidea of what a tough guy looks like.

(37:14):
Yet you've got these two ostensibly verysmall guys who probably could beat the
tar out of ninety nine of thetwo hundred and fifty pound guys walking on
the planet right now. And it'sa different world now. Those guys didn't
exist back in the day. Andback in the day is you know,

(37:35):
thirty years ago, but it's certainlyeven ten years ago before people trained it
became real fighters. And then there'ssome tough, smaller guys. I like
to think I was one of thoseguys, but I didn't have the kind
of training that Uria and Frankie gettoday. Now, if you had in
UFC one in nineteen ninety three withthe tagline Who's the Toughest Man on Earth?

(37:57):
Another tagline the Ultimate blood Sport andfunny to think that they marketed that
way just twenty years ago. Ifyou had been marketing it that way at
that time and you put Frankie Edgarand You're right a favor on a poster
or a newspaper ad, people wouldlaugh at you. Now, I say
those with all respect in the worldfor both those guys. You put those

(38:17):
guys on a poster now and peoplesay, where do I buy the ticket.
It's a different world back then,back then, and so before they're
a weight classes. Keep in mindsas well, the guys that were the
giant, jacked up, three hundredpound tattooed steroid monsters with crazy haircuts were

(38:37):
the guys that were most people's ideasof the toughest men on earth. You
know, you saw a guy likethat, you crossed the street and you
walked away. You know, youstill might do that, and most people
still might. But those of uswho are impossibly educated now can look at
most guys like that and say,okay, if that guy hasn't had any
real training, or the guy hasn'thad significant training, Uriah Favor and Frankie

(39:00):
Edgar beat the tar out of theseguys. It's a different world then.
It was all looks based. Itwas you know, when Keimo first walked
out to fight Hoyst Gracie and kimosPete plays Gracie. Of course, that
at that time, twenty years ago, was what a fighter looked like.
Now, based on that, whatI tried to do, and I won't
get into the whole story because Idid the story on Meltzer and obviously you

(39:21):
heard it in whatever the year was, UFC thirteen Augusta, Georgia. I
had to chase Bob Myerlitz and ourDavy at that time, respectively, the
owner and the booker for UFC tobring a pro wrestler into the mix.
And I stayed on them and stayedon them and stayed on them, and
ultimately got got going to take ashot with Tony Holme, who was a

(39:44):
UFC star, but the name ofLudvig Borga was legitimately the heavyweight boxing champion
of Finland. I can't imagine thatwas worth much then or now, but
the guys kind of a dubious title, but the guy did have some real
ability. He would have had ahuge rep around then speech as being a
tough guy and knocking people out inbars generally coldcock in them. And we

(40:05):
brought him into UFC and he endedup fighting Randy Cotur in Randy's debut fight.
And I can tell you due tothe way that Tony was built up
and portrayed and marketed and the wayhe handled himself in his interviews, Randy
told me after the fight that Hegot a call from his mother the day
of the fight begging him not tofight in Tony holme. She was afraid

(40:27):
Tony was going to kill him inthe middle of the cage. Randy himself,
to this day, I think,will admit, while he didn't think
he was gonna get killed, hewas pretty darned fearful of Tony as well.
So it just shows you how muchthings have changed, right, because
even Randy Coutur was a victim ofthat perception of what a tough guy was.
Well, think about Randy back.I mean, you know, it's
funny over the years physically, Randymork from a guy who did not look

(40:52):
intimidating in the least to a guywho, in my mind at least looks
like a legit tough guy. Nowhis body, chain, his face changed,
all that sort of thing. Atthat time, Randy was a six
foot tall, two hundred pound,balding guy with no tan and not a
very good position and in a verymeek demeanor. I mean, it's just

(41:14):
not the guy you'd think. Youstick into a cage opposite Tony home and
watch him walk out alive, letalone own Tony and just absolutely own him.
And just under a minute. Imean it's great, topied all expectations
of what people would have expected atthat point in time. One of the

(41:35):
things you you go ahead, no, I hope that answers your question.
Oh, it absolutely does, Yadd. One of the things you garnered
a lot of attention for in thepromotion you ran, the wrestling promotion in
California called upw Ultimate Pro Wrestling theUltimate of course, in fact, not
to Ultimate Fighting Championship, was yoursense of esthetics, your sense of how
to make guys look like stars,even in relatively small venues with no name

(41:59):
value, really to speak when whenyou have them working for your organizations.
And one of the things I wantto ask you about, because we're talking
about cosmetics and when we talk aboutthe look, the star look, we
talk a lot about physical features andhow guys appear on the street. However,
there's also an extra element that Ithink the UFC is mastered well and
I don't know to what extent rickyou follow kind of how the UFC promotes

(42:20):
its fights, how it does it'sit's countdown shows and its hype specials now,
but one of the things they've reallymastered, along with their production partners
and the guys they bring in todo hype specials. Is making guys who
don't look menacing look interesting on TV. You know, shadows, certain ways
of shooting them, certain ways offiltering the appearance of the image, certain

(42:42):
ways of you know, highlighting differentsound bites that you know. Nick Diaz
ostensibly is a guy who you wouldnot be very afraid of unless you knew
much about his backstory. Yet theyfound a way in the countdown show they
did for the Condent fight and otherthings to make this guy look like someone
you just you just need to seefight inn other in and are convinced,
even when he's clearly outmatched in alot of different ways on paper, you

(43:04):
think and win the fight. It'sit's something that I think we're talking about
this in a pro wrestling context,store in an old style MMA steroid monster
context. But even today there's thatsophistication of understanding from Dana White, Joe
Sylvan, the UFC team about howto make a guy look like someone you
want to see fight. It's stillvery very key, even if we have
a more sophisticated understanding of what itreally means to be tough. No,

(43:28):
I do follow their model very veryclosely. And I can't tell you everything
about everybody, but I'm aware ofwhat they're doing with the guys on top,
and I'm certainly aware of how theybuild a star much the way you
just described, and they're doing everythingright. I mean, it's you brought
up UPW in perception. We youknow that the apex of UPW was doing

(43:49):
these pro wrestling shows in front ofa thousand people on a good night and
we would tape it with three camerasand distribute you know, the halfway decent
at best, you know, DBDsto KYM, Martin and Walmart and whatnot.
The point of that is we hadnowhere near the budget nor the sophistication
that UFC does today. But ourmodel then in building our guys and we

(44:13):
had small guys to go with thebig guys, was exactly the model that
UFC is employing now. They doit a thousand times better than we did
it, but they're doing everything rightbecause it's about creating a character that people
want to see win or lose.It's becoming emotionally invested in the guys on
both side of the ring, orboth sides of the octagon, whatever the

(44:35):
case may be. And that's howyou build a successful business. It's what
we do with UFC. It's whatVince McMahon has for the most part done
right his entire career, and it'sabsolutely what Daniel White and UFC is doing.
Now we're talking Eric Bischoff later onin the program, and one of
the things Eric said, I basicallyasked him, you know what sells on
pay per view? You know fewunderstand that as well as a pro wrestling

(45:00):
executive who has to put out fourteenor twelve of them a year, right
pay per view and what sells?And you know, he said much the
same thing you did. You haveto have two people that people care about
basic off against each other. Oneof the things I wish I would have
asked him, and I'll ask you. You know, you can either start
with people and spend money to getpeople everyone already cares about, and that

(45:21):
work is done for you. Butthat's not sustainable. You have to know
yourself how to make people care aboutpeople that don't have a name yet.
I mean it might be a broadquestion, Rick, but generally speaking,
how do you do that? Howdo you take someone that no one knows
or cares about and make them oneof the people that you can plug into
that spot. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I don't think it's
a broad question at all, butit may be a lengthy answer, So

(45:44):
I'll do I'll do my best tobe succinct and get to the point.
Like the pay per view model ispretty simple. As you said, what
I said and what Eric said,it is true. You need to have
opponents that people care about. Youcan't care about just one. You have
to care about both. You wantto be vested in those people, and

(46:05):
you need to have a palpable outcomethat you can see play it out in
that pay per view. That's exactlythe reason, by the way, that
you know, the biggest rock bandsin the world don't work on pay per
view because they play and that's it. There's there's no culmination, there's no
climax. That's why rock and rolldoesn't work on pay per view. That's
why the only thing that does workon pay per view is boxing, wrestling

(46:29):
and mixed martial arts because there's anoutcome. Now, if it's the best
way you can answers boxing, Okay, the reason boxing only has a limited
number of successful pay per views isboxing has a limited number of stars,
and these guys have become stars fortwo reasons, in my opinions, are

(46:50):
the boxers and I'll get back toto UFC and WWE in a moment.
Because there are certain boxers whose personalitiesand character are just so outlandish though your
eyes are drawn to them, andso outlandish that the media catches onto them,
you know, whether it's a MikeTyson or a manipatio of am ever
employed Mayweather. They're few and farbetween. The reason there are so many

(47:15):
MMA and Pro Wrestling pay per viewsthat work. And let's not even say
MMA and Pro Wrestling, let's sayUFC and WWE, because even TNA pay
per view doesn't work. Eric's gonnahate me saying that, but I just
want to I want to make apoint here. If you have a WWE
and you have a UFC, andthese guys have a regular exposure vehicle,

(47:37):
which they both do in their weeklytelevision, as the producer of that television,
you write and manipulate the content whatyou do with the UFC, even
though the matches are real, everythingup until the matches is written. I
don't want to say it's contrived.It's capturing these guys and what they do
in their real lives, but it'samplified and it's you know, everything they

(48:00):
do is made to be bigger thanit actually is in a way that exactly
Now what you need in order tobe successful in this model are you need
two major ingredients. You need aguy who has the charisma or the presence
in a UFC or MMA case,you need to add the ability to fight

(48:22):
to that. In wrestling, youdon't have to be the best wrestler in
the world. Hul Coogan and JohnCena are two great examples of that.
They're guys who are never very goodas pro wrestlers in the traditional sense,
yet they have a good enough personaand charisma that you combine that with the
regular vehicle for exposure in the weeklytelevision building up to this huge confrontation and

(48:45):
pay per view, and you havethe ingredient for success. That's what it's
all about. It's pretty simple.But they're you know, but history is
littered with a lot of money peoplenot even getting the first lesson in it
by spending a ton of money tobuy themselves on the pay per view and
staging events that flop, and it'ssimple. They did it because they didn't

(49:05):
have characters that were over in thegeneral media, or they didn't have that
regular weekly television that built their charactersinto meaningful enterities. That's talk about it.
That's wonderful. That's just a great, a great summation, because I
think it's one of those things thatMMA fans might not realize they know,
but they know because they know thatthey care and get excited about a certain

(49:28):
fight, even if on paper itisn't number one versus number two, they
still get excited. And these arethe are the reasons why. And I
think it's it's it's fascinating to kindof point out that, Yeah, I
mean, that's that's what pro wrestlingis mastered, is the reasons you care
about one fight more than another,and they just control all of the circumstances
around that and manufacture it. Butwhen when the UFC can kind of edge

(49:51):
it into place, um, youknow, based around the outcomes of fights,
they that's when they pop their biggestbusiness. We both understand this,
we just don't think just you know, some times the hatred of pro wrestling
in the MMA world kind of putsblinders on guys to realize that they're really
a party rick to the same exactstyle marketing that gets pro wrestling fans to
buy shows, same exact it's it'sthe only model that works in pay per

(50:16):
view, and I would challenge EricBishop, probably the probably the greatest mind
in the industry, to come upwith another model that might work, because
it doesn't. That's it. It'sall there is to it when it comes
to the talent pool in pro wrestling. When you were scouting and making some
of your big acquisitions Warrior Sting inthe eighties, it was very clear that

(50:42):
bodybuilders were primo. That guys whojust turnheads at the airport, guys who
working out in Venice Beach, allthe stuff. These are the guys that
could go into the business and makean impact. That's what the business was,
That's what the business wanted, andthat used to be the talent pool,
and in some to some degrees wetalked about in the formative days of
UF seeing MA it was much thesame thing in Pride. Now I see

(51:02):
a talent pool in pro wrestling that'smore similar to MMA's, particularly in terms
of the skill sets and the ringstyles that guys are bringing to the table,
Samoa Joe, Cmpunk, Daniel Bryant. I mean these are guys Rick
who strike me more as having thequalities of a Frankie Edgar than a Hulk
Hogan. Oh yeah, yeah,without question. I mean it's it's nice

(51:24):
to see that and it's disappointing tosee that at the same time. And
I'll explain Joe by the way,Samoa Joe who who he didn't start in
my system, but he came upin it and got his first breaks there.
He, in my mind, isa bit of an anomaly because here's
a guy who's a big, bigguy's not a bodybuilder, but he's a
big guy who works like a littleguy. Right, that's true. That's

(51:47):
true. Daniel Brian and Cmpunk avery very good example too, probably two
of the best pure workers in thehistory of the industry. And I say
the following with all respect to bothof them. Had either one of them
shown up even at my little promotionat UPW back in its heyday, I

(52:07):
probably would have not taken either in. And if I had, it would
have been on a on a loweror mid car level, certainly because they
didn't quote unquote look the part backin those days. It's it's nice to
see guys like that going out therenow, you know, the I don't
know, I want to call themaverage looking, but comparatively speaking to what
it used to be, it's niceto see the app more average type of

(52:29):
guy go out there and have areal career. Um. The flip side
of it is the you know,again, as I mentioned earlier, I
grew up a big superhero mark,you know, Marvel comics and DC comics,
and like everybody are almost every fan. Back in the era, we
liked our pro wrestlers to look acertain way upw as you know, it

(52:50):
was very much modeled on that uhthat was killed off by the by all
the deaths attributed to you know wrongyou know, rightfully or wrongly, to
to anabolic steroids. That that changedthe industry, and that's that's it's a
very oversimplified statement. And we couldspend hours on that as well, which
could bore the hell out of everybody. But the bottom line is you can't

(53:14):
have that old look anymore because there'sjust too much scrutiny on pro wrestling in
WW in particular because of all theguys that basically dropped dead at a young
age. Yeah, there was thatmoment, There was that tipping point where
guys looking that way in the prowrestling ring brought to mind tragedy and brought

(53:34):
to mind ill health rather than ohmy god, look at this guy.
You know, oh my god,you know, look at this guy.
It's it's very, very, verytrue. And we did. We saw
that shift in the kind of bodytypes that WWF was highlighting as early as
the whole Cogan steroid trials in theearly nineties, when Brett Hart and Shawn
Michaels are able to break through andvery average looking bodies. I mean,
yeah, it was a response tothat pressure, and that was the start

(53:57):
of it. And if you talkto any of the boys who are around
OWNED at that period of time,and I'm sure you probably have, there
was a ton of not not onlya resentment, but a ton of ridicule
directed toward Brett and towards Sean backstage, because the big guys just didn't think
they should be sharing the same walkerroom. That's how different it was back
then until they really broke through,right, they would look at these guys

(54:21):
and say, who could ever careabout a guy who looks like that?
And you know, these these guysare over you know, north of two
hundred, These guys are chiseled.These are not guys who who are anywhere
even close to Let's say, youknow some of these flyweight fighters, you
know that that that are headlining onFox. Demitris Johnson one hundred twenty five
pound fighters, right, it's headliningon Fox. It's Can you imagine Demitris

(54:42):
Johnson walking into a locker room?Yeah, I'm gonna be the main inventor.
Yeah, I love it. Ilove it. Hey, as one
hundred and thirty five pound guy,I love it. I think I think
it's great, So I'm all aboutit. I still like the old school
Survivor series and Royal Rumble stuff withall the characters, because that's that's my
and that's what I grew up on. But I understand respect and appreciate why

(55:05):
it is the way it is nowon the up absolute opposite side of the
size spectrum. Brockleistener, what amassive man, just just naturally massive,
and leverage that quite well to haveone of the most lucrative runs we've ever
seen in mixed martial arts as UFCchampion. He earned those wins and I'm
not. I'm not a hater andBrock listener in any way, shape or
form. M You were part ofbringing him to MMA. You were part

(55:29):
of brokering that K One fight withwas supposed to be Hungman Choi Um in
Los Angeles, and yeah, andthe Mitman Kim instead and Sue Kim.
What a strange show. What astrange deal that must have been to put
together. Yeah, truly bizarre.I was very very involved with K one
at that point in time. Ihad a two year contract with them that

(55:51):
they called a development deal based offpretty much with the deal I had with
with ww E and WWF in prowrestling. So for two years, K
one looked at me as a guyto bring the big foreign monsters into Japan
to fight for real in their MMAdivision and in their kickboxing division. So
when they decided they were going tocome to California, they wanted to get

(56:14):
the biggest gun possible. We wentthrough a list of names. I pushed
Brock as being the best candidate.K One said, yet, please go
get them, and thus began avery very long, protracted negotiation. I
mean it was, it was amess. Um. I have a very
very detailed story of it in mybook. My book, by the way,

(56:35):
it's called been There, Done ThatThere there's a huge section in it
called the Good, the Bad,and the Ugly of pro wrestling and Mixed
Martial Arts. And the good andthe bad is it's not rehashing the same
stuff that's been talked about todat thepolitics and in the backstage maneuverings and all
that. It really focuses more onstories and experiences, you know, close

(56:57):
one to one experiences with some ofthe top names in pro wrestling and MMA,
and it's stuff that's never never beforebeen written about her or heard or
discussed probably. And there's there's abit of a dissertation on Brock and you
know, I don't want to getinto it, nor nor do I want
to tell you if he fits onmy good list or my bad list,

(57:20):
but I will tell you this,Um, he's everything you said he is
and was as a fighter. Deservesall the respect, my respect. But
that's where that's where my respect forbrock Lesner. The man hymns. You
know how to promote a book,my friend, You know how to promote
you know how to promote at all. But I have to say after having
heard you do interviews about this book, you're an idiot if you don't buy

(57:43):
it because you've interacted with like yousaid, just this cross section of personalities,
you must have one of the moreunique perspectives of anybody who's worked behind
the scenes and either pro wrestling orMMA. So I will certainly that leeway
as all yours on one question onBrock, did you really want to get
into m m A. Absolutely hedid. Yes, thought he could be

(58:06):
the best in the world, andhe wasn't wrong. You know what,
I have to give Brock credit.Here's another analogy and another not so subtle
promotion of my book along the linesof what you just said. I've got
to give Brock credit for what heaccomplished, much the same way I have
to give John Cena credit for whathe accomplished. One of the hardest working,

(58:29):
most discipline guys I've ever seen,this is John Cena, with all
the physical and charismatic gifts in theworld. And that's where my fandom of
John Cena ends as well. Veryvery interesting guy who is the opposite,
sorry absolute opposite of what most peoplewould think. And you'll anybody that picks

(58:52):
my book up, well, we'llhear about that as well. But I
do want to say this before peoplethink that that I'm hating on. Everybody
on the good list are people likeTank Abbott, amazing guy, Vince McMahon
and Triple As who have never beenanything but good to me. There's a
lot of stuff in there on Conanand the biggest star in Mexico, Antonio
Andoki we all know who he is, and on and on, and I

(59:14):
feel like I've taken a very veryfair look and all of these guys given
them, given them their credit whereit's due, but talked about the truth
behind who and what they are frommy perspective at least. And whoever I
do hit hard in my book,I think it's worth mentioning that the person
that takes it worse than anybody elseis me. So that said, I

(59:37):
take credit or discredit for the screwups and the mess ups and all that
sort of thing that have permitted myentire lifetime through you know, through the
homelessness and the addiction and the povertyand everything else. But that said,
when I look at the senas andthe lessners and other people who may be
on the good or the bad list, I think it's a very very level
look of what they're all about,and I think it's it'll blow a lot

(01:00:00):
of people away when they hear aboutit for the first time. Going Rick
all the way back to something wetouched on and discussing Vince McMahon and Shane
McMahon taking a real hard look atgetting into MMA. One of the things
that you mentioned is that you youfeel like eventually, you know, the
wrestling characters would sort of integrate intothe MMA scene, that that would have
been Vince's instinct on the whole thing, because he has stars in wrestling and

(01:00:22):
wants to imbue the MMA with thatstar power. And then you know,
perhaps the waters would get muddied,the signal would get cross to, you
know, things would get blurry.When you managed, you managed Bob Sap,
or at least you had a handin guiding along Bob SAP's career at
a time when he was just thisphenomenon in Japan's absolute phenomenon. He fought
Stephen Gamblin in an MMA fight,and you set up Gamblin. You found

(01:00:45):
Gamblin as the opponent for that fight, and he was one of my first
three wrestling students in your k Wright right, right, So so you
set this fight up and then Sapchokes him out and I think two minutes
with a guillotine or at least tapshim. And after the match, uhr
France, while botha who was aboxer who fight in K one as well?

(01:01:06):
Is it is at ringside causing aruckis Bob throws a bottle of water
at him? It was pro wrestlingright after the match. Absolutely, Bob,
Bob understood that from day one,and the Bota thing was set up.
I mean, I'm sure you suspectthat or know that, but um,
well it was pretty clear watching thetape. Yeah, I'm sorry,
it's pretty clear just watching it.Yeah, he expected him to be there.

(01:01:27):
Yeah, he wasn't much of anactor, but um, Bob Bob
got it from day one, BobBob, Bob knew how to sell.
And you know, here was aguy who really and no one, no
one looks at him this way now. I talked to Bob just either not.
Also, he's out in Japan makinga TV series right now. Um,
no one looks at Bob now ashaving been a real fighter. But
if you look at the very earlyBob Sap who nearly shocked the chocked the

(01:01:52):
hell out in the Gara and uhand and did shock some others at that
point in time. I mean,Bob was the real deal. But Bob
was never in it to be afighter. Bob was in it, God
bless him to be a star.And I don't mean that in a negative
way at all. This guy,this guy understood it from from the beginning.
He grew up as a pro wrestlingfan. He understood the model.

(01:02:14):
I mean, you look a lookat guys you know in the subsequent era,
Josh Barnett and then in the currentarea, current era Chale sonnin That
they're all very similar. I meanJosh and Chale, aren't, you know,
six foot five in three hundred andseventy pound black men. But they
get the model, and they allthey all employed that model to push themselves

(01:02:35):
in addition to their fighting ability,to push themselves to the top of the
sport. Do you feel like Kone, which you were involved in heavily
um and had some great legit fightsover the years, was got perallelously close
to being pro wrestling at certain points? Oh God did it? Ever?
Yeah? K one was not notin its grand Prix and not in its
kickboxing but in its mixed martial artsapps. Reolutely um Sadahara Tonagawa, who

(01:03:02):
you know by by by all means, really was the boss. You know,
Satoshi Ishi was the guy, butissue was away, as a lot
of people know, during that hewas he was indicted and he was in
prison. Um he was a guythat started K one from the kickboxing sense
Tonagawa who grew up as a hugefan of the Rickets and Area Era.

(01:03:23):
I'm sorry, and then Baba andAnoki um came in to to model the
more modern K One after what hehad seen in New Japan and all Japan.
And that's very much one of thereasons I was recruited to be a
part of K one because he wantedto bring the American pro wrestling influence to
his company. So yeah, Imean that was absolutely intentional to make K

(01:03:47):
one look that way and feel thatway. There's there's no gray area in
that at all and at all.Yeah. Yeah, the mines behind you
know, the Kakatogi boom, themines behind the Pride and K One explosion
in the two thousands. We're allpro wrestling fans. They were all you
know, guys who grew up understandingwhat a combat superstar was through the lens
of of pro wrestling, and that'sjust the that was just what was applied

(01:04:12):
to Pride and applied to k OneIs just said. It all happened at
the same time, and it wasIt was amazing, just op the charts,
amazing to being there at that pointin time. I think it was.
Like I said at the beginning ofthis interview, I'm pretty bad at
dates and years, but I wantto say it was New Year's Eve two
thousand and three. And you know, New Year's Eve is far and away
the biggest holiday of the year inJapan, and it's it's their version of

(01:04:36):
Christmas. The Christmas is big thereas well, of course, but on
New Year's everybody stays home with theirfamilies and they watched television and they usually
watch the singing and musical special.Well, there are four major networks in
Japan that air alive specials on NewYear's Eve, and in two thousand and
three, if I'm right on theyear, there was a music special and
the other three we're all hybrid fightingand pro wrestling events. It was amazing.

(01:05:00):
Anoki ran one Pride another and thenK one the third, and I
remember being in the locker room.I had Tom Howard and Sylvester Turkai fought
on that card, and I rememberedme in the locker room, and there
were TVs set up in all thelocker rooms tuned to all the different stations,
and we are all running back andforth, just marveling over the fact

(01:05:20):
that every major arena was packed,that the music special got blown out of
the water for the first and Ithink the last time ever, and it
was it was all about that.Then. The Japanese fans were nuts about
big, colorful guys who could fight, and that's what permeated all three broadcast
that year. It was amazing.You were at the you with Turkai and

(01:05:42):
you were with Howard, So thatwas on the K one side of things
as far as the three events,right, that's right, that's exactly right.
Yeah, that of course was avery very famous night because the deal
that was cut to get fat orto fight Eugenagata on Anoki show. You
know, all that all that fallout. Did you get a taste of that?
Was that in the air back thenwhen you were back age? Well?
Yeah, I mean it was andit wasn't that the way you know,

(01:06:03):
the Japanese pro wrestling business and thensubsequently the Japanese MMA and in kickboxing
business, it is so complex andso byzantine that unless you're Japanese, you're
never going to understand it. Theycould sit down and try to explain it
to you, but unless you're init, you know the subtleties, you

(01:06:24):
only get a hint of it.So what what the hint that we got
to answer your question was, youknow, there was treachery in the air
and everybody better watch what side they'reon and what side they stayed too.
That that was very much part ofit. Yeah, and I got very
caught up in that at one pointpersonally, um I ended up and this
is another digression, but I endedup in a match against Shinya Hashimoto Um

(01:06:46):
in Cork and Hall in Tokyo becauseI, unbeknownst to myself, kind of
blew the you know, be loyalat all costs rule when I brought when
I brought turk Hi and Tom Howardand Nathan Jones and Sean o'haret de kay
one in the first place, becausea wrestling company I was associated with at
that time, Zero one had anaffiliation with Pride right through Dreamstage Entertainment.

(01:07:12):
That's right, that's exactly right,so so high kind of you know,
trot over the unwritten rule of beingloyal at all costs and almost paid pretty
dearly for that so well to thisday, if you to this day,
if you look you up in Wikipedia, Rick, that's the picture is you
in there with with the wrestling legendShinnihashimoto throwing a knifetched chop And part of
that was get you in the ringand maybe rough you up a little bit

(01:07:34):
to teach you a lesson about thatthat breach of the ethic there that that's
exactly what that was. And funnything was, I was over on a
tour for Zero one. I hadsix of my guys with me, and
it was a five five event tourwhere it'd be all my guys upw against
zero one guys with an accumulating pointsystem based on wins, because in Japan

(01:07:56):
and pro wrestling, the winds didmatter at that point in time, and
it was going to be tied goinginto the final match of the fifth night,
at which point we would be decidedin a match between me and the
Zero one promoter Nakamura, whom youknow, not much bigger than I am.
And the night before the show,um, I had found out that
it wasn't Nakamura, it was meagainst Hashimoto. So I was basically set

(01:08:19):
up to h Yeah, to betaught a lesson, that's for sure.
Did he lay into you? Didyou get some stiff shots in that in
that match? I've never seen itunfortunately, Well yeah, I mean it's
not much to see. And I, in retrospect to a degree, M
regret the way I handled it.M truth be told, I was.

(01:08:40):
I was afraid. Um, youknow I had seen guys. You know,
I rode back on a plane fromTokyo to Los Angeles with Chad Bannon
when Chad almost lost his leg dueto leg kicks, and and I'm not
exaggerating, he literally almost lost hisleg. It was. They almost landed
the plane early because his leg wasblown up to three times normal size because
of leg kicks. And all theseyears later he was Joe walks with a

(01:09:04):
very very painful limb. But inany case, I'm trying to trying to
make myself feel better for chickening outnow, But I was. I was
afraid going into it, and I'dseen Hashimoto's leg kicks, and going into
the match, he would not talkwith me, so I knew it was
going to be there was no finishcalled. I had no idea what to

(01:09:25):
expect another In other words, forRick, for fans who might not understand
he would not talk to you aboutwhat was going to happen in the ring,
even though it was a pro wrestlingmatch. Yeah, I'm sorry,
we're unsure, dog, No,that's fine, just right, So people
understand the kind of tension that wouldcreate for a guy who you know,
isn't even really ready to wrestle,just found out the night before he's going
to work with a real pro wrestler, a very powerful guy, and that
guy's not going to say word oneto you about how it's going to go

(01:09:46):
out there. Horrifying right right,it's his backyard. He's three hundred pounds
or two seven to you whatever,he was on one than thirty five.
Um, you know, I'd seenTurkai and Nathan Jones and Lut the Reins
and the rest come backstage after takingleg kicks from this guy, and uh,
you know, I'm no Turkai.I didn't want to get leg kicked
by this guy. So in anycase, I brought my six guys out

(01:10:10):
with me to corner me and hadthem grab him at the beginning of the
match. And now I haven't seenmy Wikipedia page, but I know what
photo you're talking about. There's aphoto when my guys are holding him and
I hit him with some chops andhe took them. So right then,
thinking okay, so he's gonna workit a little bit, so I told
my guys to back off, andyou know, recalling an early Roddy Piper

(01:10:31):
Andre the Giant match, and Iwas always a huge fan of Roddy,
who's a good friend to this day. I decided to emulate that for a
moment, and I threw myself atHashimoto the way Roddy used to at Andrea.
Had just started throwing everything I hadand he kind of sort of no
sold it and nailed me with aleg kick, and I'm like, f

(01:10:53):
I'm out of here, and Ibailed. That was it? Yeah,
yeah, you weren't. You weren'tsticking around to see what his game plan
was from there. Yeah, soI kind of posted out, I admit
it, but um, you knowthe part I regret is you know,
maybe I should have seen it throughand it would have been interesting just to
really have gone for it. Butthen hey, maybe I wouldn't be walking
today. So what the hell.It's a couple more stories, Rick,

(01:11:15):
and we'll let you get out ofhere. It's it's been such a great
talk, such a great perspective onthings, and maybe even when the book
comes out, we'll have you backbecause there's so much to get into.
One of the names I always associatewith you is Butterbean, right y.
Yeah, he got involved in MMA, and you are always kind of part
of the management of him. Um, what do you make of Butterbean's run
in MMA, Because it was,you know, it was strange, it

(01:11:39):
was exotic in some ways. Youhad Yankee Pseudo and Minnowa tapping him,
and at other times he put awinning streak together. And he was not
a bad boxer by any stretch.Butterbean's an interesting case. Well, what
do you make of his run inmixed martial arts? Well, you know,
being Bean, by the way,Ilse one of my one of my
best friends in the entire industry.He's such a great, great guy.
I met him backstage at that showwhere he fought Gyankie pseudo, and you

(01:12:03):
know, this is back when wewere all becoming educated, even me,
I didn't really understand what I waswatching, and I still when Yankee got
him, I think it was aheel hook. I saw a Bean lying
on the mat, going, what'sgoing on here? He didn't understand it
either, He just knew he wasin something, in a hurt, so

(01:12:24):
he tapped out. So Bean gotinto it much the way a lot of
the American pro wrestlers or other physicaltypes first got into MMA in Japan.
They were called for a pay day. So he wandered into it, didn't
really get it, but loved itright away. I mean Bean, you
know, for such a nice,really cool, affable guy, is a

(01:12:46):
real warrior. He likes to fight, and you see the switch get turned
on him, like like like shanOher did in that Pride match in Vegas,
which which was something else, andhe's in it. He'll fight anybody,
anywhere, any style. He likedthe money. Again, he's a
businessman like most of the guys withany longevity in the business, and he
just kind of wandered out there,kind of like the sheep to slaughter for

(01:13:10):
a while. Until he caught acouple of guys with punches and knocked him
out James Thompson in less than aminute in cage range in England. I
was there in his corner and thenhe was called by America Top Team.
He said, hey, we couldmake you into an interesting project. He
went out to Florida with the laborio, learned some submissions and actually won several

(01:13:30):
matches by submission, which is kindof funny if you think about it.
Yeah, but you know, Beansa true athletic prodigy. M He didn't
have the mobility at that point inhis career, but you know if you
were, if you were close orhe got close to you, he could
have put almost not anybody, butalmost anybody in a legitimate degree of danger,

(01:13:53):
not from not just from a knockout, but by submission from tuer strength.
How is he these days? It? Bean's fine. He's in Alabama
doing his thing. He's um,he's in some diversified businesses and he'll still
go do a boxing match on occasion. But you know, like so many
of the guys at his age thathave UM, you know, undergone the

(01:14:15):
physical toil that he has. He'she's absolutely winding down. You had said
earlier Rick that you were, asfar as you know, the first promoter
to get a license in California.Well, I'm not sure about is if
I had the first MMA gym inthe state. I think I did.
Um me. Ken Shamrock might saydefinitely with the lions Den, but his

(01:14:38):
thing wasn't really so much a gymas a more of an underground training center.
Um yeah, No. But thelicenses, yes, there, they
were all given. There were sevenor eight of us that got our promoters
licenses on the same day in California. This is the first day that the
Athletic Commission handed them out. Butthe Valor Fighting happened to be the first
up in order, so that that'show I know you were the first together,

(01:15:01):
right, one of the auspicious moments. And to be clear, you
were not the promoter for the ValorFighting event that was canceled under the banner
World Cage Fighting Organization cards. Yes, I know. It's not something a
lot of fans will probably remember,though it was a pretty big news story
at the time when it was canceled, I believe in two thousand and eight.

(01:15:21):
Um, And it was a showI think Baba Loo was on the
card. A few other guys hadbeen signed. I think Vernon Tiger White
was going to fight. Um,Mark Kurw was there. I think Campbell
ask was was there? No,I'm sorry, I'm confusing out the show
in Connecticut that was canceled. Okay, that's a different one, all right,

(01:15:41):
Sorry that Yes, yes, youwere involved in that one too as
well at Mohegan's Son, Right,that's right, that's right. Yeah.
So those are two examples of howthings can go horribly horribly wrong sometimes in
promoting fight sport. Right, Um, what what can you tell our listeners
about how it gets to that pointthat a plug gets pulled on a show?
How it gets that bad? Froman operational standpoint that you know,

(01:16:04):
these fighters are committed to fight.Everyone shows up, you know, not
everyone, but some people buy ticketsand you can't have the show. It's
it boggles the mind when you takea step back and look at it.
Well, there were different sets ofcircumstances for the two events, the Mohegan's
Son and the one in San Diegothat that you had first mentioned. So
let me tell you about the onein San Diego. What had happened is

(01:16:25):
there was a new promoter. Youknow, at that point, MMA was
getting so hot. You know,anybody that had an inkling to be a
promoter, it was trying to jumpinto the game. Now there was gun
name Bruce Bollachi that had apparently promotedsome boxing in different parts of the country,
who went and rented Jackie Cowen's license. Jackie's the famous female boxing promoter,

(01:16:46):
and he did an event in Hollywoodthat I had a couple of fighters
on, Maverick being one of themwho had mentioned before, Mark Kerr fought
on this card. And you know, while Bruce was a little disorganized,
ultimately the event came off and everyonegot paid. And then Bruce decided he
wanted to do an arena event.Well, you know, he on the

(01:17:06):
surface looked like one of those promotertypes you want to shy away from.
But the guy who's very charismatic,I liked him. He approached me and
said, I want to do anarena event. I don't have time to
get a license, so can Irent your license? Will make a deal.
You'd be the promoter of record,but I'll promote the event. So
we made a deal and he rentedValor's license. I think the fee was

(01:17:29):
twenty thousand, ten of which wegot. We never got the second ten.
And we had a contract and thecontract said valor is too be responsible
for this and that just a fewfew odds and ends items. The primary
thing Bollachi and WCO and our contractat least was responsible for. We're all
the finances for the entire event.Now that doesn't change the fact that when

(01:17:50):
you're the promoter of record with thestate, ultimately it's your responsibility to the
fighters and to anything that's commission relatedto judge, is the referee, so
on and so forth. Now Imade a really, really stupid mistake in
association with this event. Um whatI did not do was get Bruce to

(01:18:11):
put all the money into esk growto pay the fighters. I didn't think
of it at that point in time. And this is all chronicle in my
book as well. I was undergoingall kinds of crazy stuff. I was
going through a divorce. My dadwas dying from pancoreatic cancer. I was
taking care of him. I hadhad a major surgery, got addicted to
narcotic painkillers. All my businesses werefailing. It was just this, this

(01:18:35):
whole confluence of events which you knowpretty much hadn't you know me take my
head and stick it up my youknow, you know what, I just
wasn't paying attention, so I neverthought to get Bruce to post the money
to bond the entire event. Wellwhat happened as we got closer to the
event is, you know, Iwas about as near a complete oblivious more

(01:18:59):
on at that point in my lifeif as you possibly could be. But
you still couldn't help. But noticethe fact that there were no tickets and
no marketing for this event at all. So at a certain point in time,
I thought to ask Bruce how hewas going to pay for the difference
between the ticket sales and the expenses, because, you know, being avoid
forever, I knew the event wasgoing to lose a ton of money.
Yeah, you know, as obliviousas I was, you couldn't help.

(01:19:21):
But notice that, Well Bruce says, oh no, no, don't worry,
We're going to sell out. Soit was a very very delusional statement.
Yeah, total red flag. Youknow, I knew the advanced sales
at that point, this is aweek in advance the event, were about
one hundred and fifty tickets. Iwent to the arena. I sat down
with the arena manager, found outwhat their history was for events. It

(01:19:43):
would you advance that way? Wethought, with any luck, we might
get a thousand tickets sold, whichmeant the event was going to lose probably
one hundred thousand dollars, if notmore. Bruce said, no, don't
worry about it. I have abacker. He sent me to meet the
backer that the guy's advice as ofa bank. I went to the bank
to meet him as a very veryreal guy. The guy was super excited

(01:20:04):
about being in a business and allthe money that he was going to make
and all the tickets that have beensold so far. And I said the
tickets. He goes, yeah,yeah, I was six thousand tickets sold.
So the guy showed me a falsifiedreport that Bruce had supplied him with.
Yeah. So, now at thispoint I had a call to me,
and neither call was do I covermy own house and just not say

(01:20:28):
anything, or do I say something? So I let the guy know that
you know, that's not right.There about one hundred tickets sold. He
called the arena. He learned thetruth. He pulled out. At that
point, Bruce says, no,no, no, I have another backer,
and he shows me a deposit slipfor two hundred and some thousand dollars
at his bank. We tracked downthe guy that wrote the check. The

(01:20:48):
guy had less than ten dollars inhis account. He opened the account to
write a check to Bruce. Sothis was now the day before the event.
The fighters were in town. Ilet Armando Garcia, who was a
commissioner at that point in time,know what's going on. And Armando said,
well, Rick, buddy, yourass is on the line. He

(01:21:10):
goes this, He goes, youmay have a contract with this guy,
saying he's responsible, but you're responsibleto me. This was permission or Armando.
We all remember him, some fondly, most not MNAs he was doing
his job. If the event hadgone ahead and we had end up with
a thousand sales, I'd figured Iwould have lost at least one hundred thousand

(01:21:30):
dollars. So Armanda said, youhave a call to make go ahead with
the event, everybody their full purse, or you can pull the event now
and you pay everybody twenty percent becauseit made the flight. So I had
enough money left at that point inmy life. I lost almost everything I
had enough to cover that twenty percent. I wrote the checks, everybody went

(01:21:53):
home. I think I had abouttwo thousand bucks left to my name after
that, with probably twenty thousand amonth in expenses. And that was it
unbelievable. You know, it's definitelyit's definitely not something that MMA fans think
a lot about, are pro wrestlingfans for that matter, in terms of
the kind of pressure cooker it suddenlycan become. And you've bounced back,

(01:22:15):
I mean to some degree. Iknow that you're probably not rolland and Doe,
but but but I hope you're somewhatback in your feet Rick and feeling
confident about the future. You know, I'm I'm okay, I'm you know,
two years or two and a halfyears ago, um, I had
hit the proverbial rock bottom. Imean, it sounds so cliche to say
that, but you know, afterall the stuff happened that I just mentioned

(01:22:40):
to. My book's written in eightchapters, and it's kind of metaphoric for
having lived eight lives. In manyways, I feel like I have lived
eight separate in distinct lives, fromyou know, from having lung cancer for
three years stage four lung cancer,from watching my family dropped dead one by
one from being drug addicted about everything, I'll magic noble. You know,

(01:23:00):
I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've lived homeless. But then the
flip side of that is or there'sbeen it's been a great riot, you
know, as an executive at Disney, I want an Emmy award, as
a producer at a great run inthe NFL. As as an agent there,
I upw and valor, of course. But the point of this is
I feel like I've lived and diedeight times. And in chapter seven it

(01:23:23):
was called the Downfall or everything thatcan go wrong will go wrong, And
that ended about actually three years agonow, when I came out of spending
a couple of months in my car, and it's after I lost the last
thing on earth that meant anything tome, and that was my dogs.
When I was in when I losteverything, I lost my home. I
had to find a place to live. I bordered my dogs for a week

(01:23:45):
somewhere boarding facility let them out.I found one of my dogs crushed on
the side of a road and myother dog was missing. So I spent
two months living in my car onthe dirt road where I found my dog
Marley crushed looking for my dog Ramon, and I was out of my mind.
I was basically living off of youknow, vodka, red Bull and

(01:24:05):
bike it and not not exactly thewinner's diet, and I was out of
money, so I would break intostores to steal the stuff. I became
very good at knowing where the vicatand was kept in the backroom the pharmacies
when I needed it. I don'tknow why I didn't take enough for a
lifetime supply, but I wasn't thinkingvery straight. So on one of these
breaking grabs, I ran into thesecurity guard who shot me, and you

(01:24:28):
know, I ended up back inmy car, the shotgun in my mouth
and loaded on bike it in andred Bull and vodka, good vodka.
Of course, I only took thegood stuff. And you know, I
made a decision on the spot thatyou know, to take the gun in
my mouth and see what I coulddo. And I don't want to get
into details again. I don't wantto board the hell out of your listeners.
This is sure dog in mixed martialarts. But I started a long

(01:24:51):
road to recovery in every sense healthwise, mentally, physically, emotionally, drug
wise, I got my dog Ramonbacked by the way so four months later,
which was like the greatest victory I'veever had. And he's actually sitting
on my lap right now. Mycrazy pit bulls sound asleep on my lap
while we're talking. But I'm doingpretty good now. I'm not rolling,

(01:25:13):
as you said, but I'm makingpretty decent money. Got a nice house
here up in the mountains of BigBear. I've got my dive back if
we got a new sister for himfrom from the actress Linda Blair who who
rescues and adopts out pit bulls.Got a lot of cool business stuff going
on, and mostly I've got thisbook, which I'm very, very psyched
about. I hope people out theredig it if they get it, but

(01:25:36):
I'm not rolling enough to put thebook out myself. That's why I've gone
in undertaking this Kickstarter campaign. I'vegot four days left on it. I've
raised forty two thousand of the neededfifty thousand. Got a lot of the
notables from the pro wrestling world,of the Knicks martial arts world have donated,
which has been kind of a blessingto know that I have their support,
and you know, we'll see wherelife goes from here. It's a

(01:25:57):
pretty it's a pretty cool ride there. It is so much part of the
intersection of pro wrestling and MMA thathe's getting calls and donations from both worlds
to put out this book. RickBaseman joining us here on the first half
of the Shirtdog Radio Network rewind ourspecial report on the crossover of MMA and
pro wrestling. It obviously is avery very rich and deep subject. And

(01:26:19):
Rick, we thank you so muchfor shedding so much light on how those
rules of intersection my pleasure. CanI get one last quick plug in there?
Do we have a second for that? Of course? Okay, very
good, thank you. Okay,today while we record this, it's it's
Thursday. I think this interview ArizonSunday. At that point, I'll be

(01:26:39):
exactly one day left on my Kickstartercampaign. I don't know if I'll have
made it by the time people outthere listen to this. I would be
very grateful if your listeners would logonto my website. It's www. Dot
Ric Bassman dot com r I CK. B ASSMAM. On the very
top of the website is a linkto donate the Kickstarter If you guys would

(01:27:02):
check it out. Put a fewbucks down, that'd be amazing. Maybe
you'll get me over the edge.If I'm not there yet, it'll be
my last chance. And if youmake a pledge, you'll be joining Sting
and Roddy Piper and Diamond Dallas Pageand Tank Abbott and Don Fry and Olive
Tampara've been a bunch of others,and I would be truly, truly appreciative

(01:27:24):
there. It is the cast fromboth worlds. You somehow wrapped it all
up there, Rick in a nicebow. I appreciate that even in the
midst of the plug. Rick Basman, it's been incredible to have you on
the show. Best to luck inthe future and we do look forward to
checking out the book. Thanks somuch, man, it's been a blastpeing
on. Have a good one.You're listening to an SRN rewind special report.
Welcome back to the Shirtdog Radio NetworkRewind. I'm Jack and Canarcio and

(01:27:45):
it's once again time for the Sundaysit Down. You know I've espoused for
years on these airwaves that there's alot to learn about the mixed martial arts
industry from professional wrestling. When youlook at both enterprises from a business perspective
and get over the fact that onehas predetermined outcomes and one doesn't. You
see far far more similarities than youdo differences. There's a hell of a

(01:28:06):
lot to learn about how MMA functionsand the television and media worlds from pro
wrestling. There is no better corollary. In fact, few grasp this architecture
more clearly and have the frontline experienceof Eric Bischoff, who ran the WCW
Wrestling organization during a stretch of cablerating success that threatened to supplant Vince McMahon's

(01:28:28):
empire. Few have more contemporary experienceand how to sell what's thought of fairly
or unfairly as a fringe sport inthe modern television world with all of its
creative and revenue demands. Eric Bischoffis brutally honest yet very polished. Today
he's the executive producer of TENA ImpactWrestling on Spike, which you probably know
as the lead in to Belatore FightingChampionships and the program that serves up a

(01:28:50):
sizeable chunk of Belatour's impressive audience everyThursday. The synergy is pronounced and symbolized
by the experiment of having King MolaWall traffic in both worlds at the same
time. Eric Bischoff joins us tonighton the Rewind to hopefully help us understand
how the ways of the wrestling businesscan help us see the business of mixed
martial arts more clearly. Eric,thanks so much for joining us. Thank

(01:29:15):
you so much for using the wordcorollary in an interview in which I'm participated,
because this is a first for me, and I can't tell you how
excited I am. Yeah, we'reoff to a good start, needless to
say so. For you know,you have to pardon me a few times
in this interview. For the fansMMA fans who may be listening to this,
who might not be totally versed inpro wrestling, I'll have to lay
some foundational things. First of all, TNA Wrestling Impact comes on every Thursday

(01:29:40):
night on Spike before Bellatour. Bellatouris in an interesting position, Eric,
and I don't know to what extentyou're familiar with them and their presence in
the MMA space, but they're they'rein a position where guys with names are
becoming available from the UFC. TheUFC is in a kind of a reduction
of roster mode. They're cutting alot of guys, some with big names,
some who have established very good resumesin the sport, in the dominant

(01:30:02):
fight organization, and they have tomake a decision Bellator does about signing them,
because you know, you want tohave a homegrown system to kind of
build your own stars, of course, but and not be seen as a
landing pad for UFC cast offs.Yet I look at what WCW did and
the success it found, taking guyswho would come out of the WWF like
your whole Cogan's, Randy Savages andother big names and some lesser names as

(01:30:23):
well, and it was very,very successful. So I wonder what the
wisdom is around, you know,taking cast offs from the dominant organization,
so to speak, to build yourcompany around them. Is it a good
idea a bad idea? Well rightoff the batch of characterizing anybody who isn't
a part of UFC as a castoff. And I think, what if

(01:30:47):
you pointed out right for myself UFC, would you see their roster. They're
having to make some self business decisions. There's only so much room for so
much challenge or so many fighters,and they're making businesses are and they may
decide to let go of people whoyou know, the word tasks out really
doesn't apply to There are a lotof great fighters out and I would,

(01:31:10):
you know, my physician and watchingthe UFC develop over the years, and
you know, you have to kindof understand from my perspective, I was
around. I was around martial artsbefore they call that mixed martial arts,
back to the days of the pKaand Joe Corley and the fights that were
on ESPN. And I've watched martialarts who evolved over the last thirty years

(01:31:35):
on television to the point where itis now. And one of the things
that I'm seeing now with UFC inparticular, is they're having a hard time
building a brand around any fighter.They're building the UFC brand. They're building
to dain a white brand, butthey're fighters aren't around long enough for mainstream

(01:31:56):
media or the periphery audience to reallylatch onto. I mean, a guy
comes around, he wins the title, he becomes the next big thing for
three months, and that somebody elsecomes along and beats him and allows that
as a credit to what UFC hasdone. Because it's kind of like any
given Sunday approach. Anybody can beatanybody in any given day, which is

(01:32:18):
a good thing in many ways,but it's a bad thing because you never
have anyone around long enough to becomea brand name. And now there's a
lot of great talent who are nameswithin the MMA universe who really aren't mainstream
names. You know, the averageperson who's not a hardcore MMA fan wouldn't

(01:32:39):
know three quarters of the MMA rosterif they walked up and sets us now
next to him, you know,in a restaurant. And that's not a
good thing. And I think theposition of Bellatore is and I am you
know, I have been watching theBellatore fights religiously, just because of the
nature of the relationship despight to me, those are great fights. There are

(01:32:59):
fun fights to watch. The producers, you know, a spiker, they
have done a great job of makingme care about the fighters, even in
a short period of time. Icare one way or the other. Who
winn't that fight? And my answer, my long wined answer, is that
I think Bellator is in a greatposition as long as they keep their eye

(01:33:19):
out for the greatest fighters that theycan find, the hungriest fighters, they
can find it doesn't matter if theywere previously with UFC and are subsequently cast
as a cast off in your opinionor other people's opinions, or if they're
just great fighters who, for whateverreason, timing, you know, probably
being the biggest issue, didn't happento be able to land a long term

(01:33:43):
gig there. So if I wereVellator, if I was running that,
and that's what they give two shotsabout my opinions. But if I were
running an organization, I would justkeep my eye on the ball for the
hungriest fighters. The best fighters cannotreally care one way or the other whether
they came from UFC or they orwhether they're an unknown fighters. Sure,
sure, yeah, And it's interestingto hear you respond that way to the

(01:34:04):
word cast off. I definitely cansee a negative connotation to it. That
isn't quite what I was saying.I was saying just in terms of,
you know, guys who the audiencemay perceive as for whatever reason, not
interesting the interesting the UFC and keepingthem, you know, I mean,
that's that may be how the audienceviews it. And you used a lot

(01:34:24):
of wrestlers and featured them prominently infund great success in WCW who admittedly perhaps
some WWF fans may have looked atthat way, yet you're able to leverage
them in such a way where yousort of breathe new life into them.
Um, could you talk a littlebit about that process, about taking someone
that the audience might view as wellthat guy couldn't cut it in the UFC,
yet, you know, reinjecting interestin creating new life in another organization

(01:34:47):
and keeping with the seam at thisinterview and looking for the parallels between wrestling
and UFC. What I did,I think fairly effectively at least for a
while, was thinking to established likea haul covidn't like Mandy Savage and others,
and putting them on the roster,but yet at the same time introducing
new talent which at the time wererelatively unknown to the mainstream audience, like

(01:35:12):
Chris Jerichoes and the Email It Goes, and then chrispin Wise and the Eddie
Burrows, who although they were wellknown to the hardcore audience, particularly in
the international marketplace, as far asthe mainstream television audience, they were relatively
unknown. They didn't have a plantime platform, so to speak. So
by using the strength and the powerof established brands and using that strength to

(01:35:36):
help gain exposure for younger, newerpressure talent. I think we found that
kind of perfect balance, and Ithink you know that at least for me,
and you know back then that waskind of like to go to formula.
It worked very well. You mentionedbefore how at certain periods in the

(01:35:57):
UFC and certain weight divisions, thetitle has been something of a hot potato
and it might be confusing or disorientingfor the fan to really discern who the
biggest deal is in the weight class, who the star here is, who
the dominant fighter is. Sometimes fightersare so exceptionally gifted that they just keep
turning challengers away, like a GeorgeSaint Pierre or currently at John Jones,
and it's crystal clear who the staris and it's not hard for the fan

(01:36:17):
to discern. Other times, therewere periods where the title changes hands two
or three times in a year.Knowing the nature of mixed martial arts,
Eric and how you cannot control whowins and who loses, how do you
think you would approach that problem interms of, you know, the title
is going to change hands whether youwant it to or not. So you're
sort of hamstrung right in terms ofhow you can promote somebody to be a

(01:36:38):
standout star. Well, and that'sthe kind of blessing and the beast that
that is what is this martial artstoday? Um, you know, and
again I have to addis I'm nota hard or you know, devoted mma,
so I don't follow it as closely, and I know most of their

(01:37:00):
audience does. But the last timeI remember anybody being around long enough for
their coffee to get lukewarm in theUFC was Charcoldell, and Laddell was around
long enough that the mainstream actually beganto catch up with them. He started
to get some get spots on showslike Controse, He was on the cover

(01:37:20):
of magazines the mainstream media picked upon because he was around longer than thirty
years sixty days. That doesn't happenanymore. And until and unless the mainstream
media grabs a hole though to them, you know, it's going to be
hard for that to happen. Tothe UFC's credit, the competition is so

(01:37:42):
equally balanced that this is you know, getting redunded. I talked about this
earlier, but the competitions us reallybalanced there's the title probably will change chance
over thirty days, and that meansthat the sport is the support is going
to become the start, not thetalents. To me, I think that's
an inherent challenge. H Do Ihave an herreswer for that. I don't

(01:38:04):
have an answer to that. Idon't think the talent pool is deep enough
to find that one Muhammad Ali,that one George Foreman, even that one
Ken Norton that's going to come outto one Sugar Ray letters of one auster
Leio. Boxing has always had that, but I don't think MMA will because

(01:38:24):
it's such a new sport. Theskill level this kind of equal across the
board. Once you get to that, you know that that that hierarchy that
circumplfill of of real heavyweight challengers orchampionship talent, the skill level is kind
of equal across the port, andyou're going to get that any given Sunday

(01:38:45):
phenomenon. M what do you thinkof the King Moe experiment having him do
pro wrestling and mixed martial arts fightingat the same time in Bellatur and in
TNA. You know, I thinkI think it was a noble I think
it's it will continue to be anoble effort. I think you know King
Mo is you know, one ofthose athletes who has the you know god,

(01:39:09):
he of the gift of charisma andpersonality and athleticism, and I think
he's capable of doing both. Um. But clearly, you know, King
Mo has his work cut out fromhim an mma. Um. You know
the last night was what it waspretty easy to see. There's some flaws
in his game. But he's alsothe type of athlete that's going to go

(01:39:31):
back to the drawing board and correctosuass. He's he's got a great head
out the shoulders, he's a greatperformer, he's got a kind of desire
and if there's anybody that can kindof wear both so speak, I would
say King Moo is one of them. Do you think, Eric, that
the frame of mind of the modernwrestling fan is such that a performer can

(01:39:51):
be presented in pro wrestling, ina pro wrestling context as a threat,
as a tough guy, as atop tier in ring force, but get
knocked out in mixed martial arts?Do you think that the two worlds are
so separate in the audiences so understandthe differences that that isn't material or do
you think we're still in an erawhere if you get knocked out on television

(01:40:13):
in a real fight, it's goingto affect how you perceived in pro wrestling.
Yeah. I have to be honesthere. I think it is a
challenge, you know. I mean, I think brock Lessner, you know,
experienced it in w W experienced it. Although brock Lesner had a long
and kind of established professional wrestling careerbefore he got into UFC in the he

(01:40:34):
had some success in UFC, Ithink the last couple of fights that he
had diminished his perception within wrestling.I think King Moe has got the same
type of challenge, but you know, without the benefit of having established himself
as a dominant player for a periodof time in Miss Marsala. You know,

(01:40:58):
brock Lesner had the advantage of beingable to go out there and put
out the hell of the show andyou know, kind of create that next
big thing aura with the MMA beforehe has the last couple of plays.
Chemo hasn't had that opportunity. AndI do think, you know, fans
do watch closely enough, and althougheverybody knows wrestling isn't wrestling and MMA is

(01:41:19):
you know, MMA, and althoughthere are some similarities, as you talked
about it in the league up tothe show, I think most like ninety
five percent or more of the viewersunderstand the different people of the difference between
the two. But it doesn't hurt. Excuse me, it doesn't help to

(01:41:39):
go out there and have a badperformance and then try to create a different
persona inside of the professional wrestler againstit. It's a challenge. Yeah,
It'll be interesting to see how yourself, Dixie Carter, TNA Spike navigates that
because it is a twist in theroad. I think if they were to
roadmap how this chemo experiment would playout, certainly winning the Belatore Tournament in
his first mmas on Spike would wouldbe a big part of it. I

(01:42:02):
wonder Eric, what you think overallof integrating MMA and wrestling together. I
know it's obviously a something that Spikeand Dixie believe in very much, particularly
Spike, which even when they wereworking with the UFC, was I think
always pushing to somehow integrate their wrestlingproduct with with the UFC, and I
think Dana White was perhaps a littlemore resistant to it than than Jordn Redney

(01:42:24):
is. Of course, Viacom boughta majority share in that company. That's
not to say Byord Redney wouldn't beum, you know, game if they
hadn't. But basically, when I'mwondering, and I think Spike has kind
of been pushing this for for yearsnow as far as TENA goes is trying
to make the wrestling product kind ofresemble MMA a bit more. As far
as the action in the ring,I wonder what you think about that.

(01:42:44):
I understand there's been you know,a little bit of resistance to that because
you know, to some degree,wrestling still has to be wrestling. You
don't want the matches to look likereal fights necessarily. Well, there's a
five line, and I think anotherparallel, which you really the television,
you know, the audience. There'sjust general television audience now has gotten so

(01:43:06):
used to seeing reality television that they'velearned to expect certain formulas or elements of
reality television, and it helps someenhanced their suspension of disbelief. Likewise,
I think the wrestling splash MMA audience, and while I think they're completely different,

(01:43:29):
they are apples and oranges in manyways, but in some ways there's
a lot of similarity the demos.The demographics are very very similar kind of
desire to engage in to sasprom fuelbehavior and very similar. And I think
to a certain degree you can integrateelements of MMA into professional wrestling. That

(01:43:59):
allows the profess show wrestling viewer tofeel like they're watching something that they're kind
of familiar with in MMA, andthat has got a little bit of a
cool factored with it. But yougot to be careful that you don't try
to do too much because wrestling isstorytellers and MMA is a competitive sport.
And while there are some small similaritiesand presentation, and there can be some

(01:44:24):
creative similarities and presentation, you haveto be careful that you don't go too
far because then you'll alienate the wrestlingaudience and you'll also alienate the MMA audience.
You know why. You don't know, you don't want to offend their
sensibilities. Yeah, And I thinkthat's something particularly that MMA fans really have
no grasp on at all in termsof the mentality of the pro wrestling fan.

(01:44:47):
One of the things that you saidin your book Controversy Creates Cash is
that the wrestling audience is much moresophisticated about what they expect out of the
product than anybody in the TV worldunderstands. There's a tendency to think that
the wrestling fan is you know,kind of dumb, kind of not discerning
and what they want to see kindof you know, do not watch the

(01:45:08):
show and watch the product and engagein it with a critical lie. But
of course anyone who's worked in thebusiness or has followed the business or as
a fan of the business knows that'sthe exact opposite. There. Perhaps there's
no harsher critic in terms of anytelevision programming than a wrestling fan. So
could you help our listeners who mightnot know wrestling understand kind of how important
it is to you know, getthe right tone with the wrestling fan and

(01:45:29):
how you you know, you justcan't shove anything down their throats. You
have to really understand the cues thatthey're looking for for something to really take
the wrestling audiences and thank you forboming it out, because the wrestling audience
is one of the more complex andsophisticated and demanding audiences there are out there.

(01:45:54):
Much like NASCAR fans are almost obsessivecompulsive in terms of their passion or
NASCAR wrestling fans have an equal compulsivenessif you will, about their five They
know the history, they can recite. I mean, there are people here

(01:46:15):
in Chicago who can tell me whereI was fifteen years ago on a Monday
night and what match was the mainevent and who opened up that show you
over a beer. It never ceasesto amaze me how passionate wrestling fans are.
And that's a wonderful thing. That'swhy this business has been around since
the beginning of television time. Ityou know, it was the cutting edge

(01:46:42):
of syndicated television in local market televisionback in the fifties and sixties. It
was on the cutting edge of cabletelevision and still is. It was on
a leading edge of pay per viewand still is. It's one of the
largest live event in Evans or productoris anywhere in the United States. It
still is, and there's a reasonfor that. It's character driven, its

(01:47:04):
action. It's justestosterone. It's largerthan life. But those fans who have
grown up with West Line and whoare attracted who have also share kind of
a common denominator in that they havea knowledge they understand the history, and
they have a certain expectation that ifyou don't deliver because you are experimenting,

(01:47:26):
or you don't deliver because you don'trespect it, they will turn on you
on a freaking dime. Believe me, I've been there, I've experienced it.
And conversely, if you respect thefact that they do have a sense
of history and they do have acertain expectation, they do understand story,
they understand character, if they understandheart, if you do respect that,

(01:47:50):
then they're your greatest asset. AndI think it's the same is probably true
an mma. Yeah, Yes,a lot of the things you said there
I think are probably true of mixedmartial arts fans as well, particularly the
obsessive, compulsive nature, particularly theknowledge of history. Of course, when
it comes to storytelling, there's notas much of a critical eye because you

(01:48:10):
know, people are in it forthe competitive sporting aspect to see who the
best fighter is. But you know, matchmaking is something that causes a lot
of handwringing from purists who think numberone should always fight number two. And
then the other side of the equationthere's the more marketable fights they're going to
drive pay per view sales. Well, we'll talk about that element of things
here, but I wanted to getyour thoughts because if you were an obsessive,
compulsive MMA fan over the years,Eric Bischoff's name might not be completely

(01:48:33):
foreign to you. This didn't actuallytake off, but for a little while
after WCW folded in two thousand andone, your name was associated with an
organization called Battle Management that was thinkingabout getting involved in representing mixed martial arts
fighters and actually kind of calling astable of fighters as agents that you could
then pitch, you know, realitytelevision projects too, and other types of

(01:48:54):
projects with the stable of fighters,kind of independent of which organization those fighters
fought for. I think Mark Colemanand Randy Gator were both signed at one
point to Battle Management. Can youtell us a little bit about what what
the vision was for that project last? Battle Management was a company that was
started by a gentleman who has becomein front of my bug and Peter Levin.

(01:49:15):
Peter Levin reached out to me postWCW because he was familiar with my
background and the business of professional leslie. I thought that I could be an
asset. I I was there forabout a year a year and a half
and got involved with them, andthe vision was really to manage to his
many challenge as possible. That PeterLevin was an assistant, really the right

(01:49:42):
hand man if you will, toa very high profile and controversial Hollywood.
I come by the name of MichaelOvis and Peter is one of the smartest
people I've ever met in Hollywood.And Peter decided that he was going to
kind of model himself with battle managementafter the Michael Hobt's model and control as

(01:50:03):
many fighters as he could and bydoing so, have a fair amount of
control over and within the mixed martialarts industry. He was a visionary at
his son. Unfortunately it didn't workout, but I had a great association
with them, enjoyed my time withthem, have done quarious business deals with

(01:50:25):
them outside of MMA with Peter Lovin. But while I was there and pass
required to getting there, I wasone of the first people to bring that
brought K one to the United Statesand pay per view back to chat I
don't even know when that was ninetyfive and ninety six, when Message she
was still in control of K one. I did color commentary with some Ioto

(01:50:50):
and Bruce Lee's daughter as a matterof fact, not a K one event
from Tokyo. So I've always beena fan of mixed martial arts and martial
arts, etcetera. Just because ofmy participation. That was one hundred years
ago. Oh, needless to sayit, I can't I can't believe how
long ago it seems like that thatwcw H ceased to exist in what a

(01:51:14):
what a industry game changing moment thatwas when it comes to battle management,
Eric, did you know in yourtime there and looking at that industry and
kind of applying the mindset and thelessons you learned and wrestling to this MMA
venture, did you get a flavorit was a much different business back then.
That was just as Dana White andthe Fatidas were taking over the UFC
and there was a lot of changein the industry at the time. Did

(01:51:34):
you get a flavor of whether kindof an enterprise like that, kind of
calling a stable of fighters and representingthem. We've seen a lot of agents
do this, but this seemed likebattle management seemed like a real big,
big push to do this on ahigh level, kind of like almost creative
artist agency level kind of way ofdoing it, and did you get a
sense or a flavor of whether therewas any receptiveness to that or was there

(01:51:55):
pushback in the industry to kind ofamassing that much talent with that much leverage.
I think a Battle Management would havelaunched their initiative a year or eighteen
months sooner. They would have probablybeen around today and probably probably would have
been shot callers today within the worldof MMA. But Proceeds a UFC had

(01:52:18):
gained enough momentum at that time,had enough leverage, and we're quite honestly,
we're very stu very smart business people. They weren't going to let any
one third party organization control the fighters, and we're able to do a pretty
good job of depending against that strategy. But a year or two early earlier,

(01:52:42):
I think, you know, Peterwould have had a lot more success.
Timing being key in your time runningWCW. Was there something tantamount to
that. I know you've talked aboutsome of the difficulties negotiating with some of
the talent that got involved with higherprofile agents, Bill Goldberg comes to mind,
But was there some the resistance inpro wrestling to that. I know
you didn't necessarily discourage your wrestlers fromworking with talent agents. In fact,

(01:53:05):
sometimes you thought it was a goodthing. But I wonder on balance if
the temperature in the wrestling world wasthe same as it was in the MMA
world towards you know, mass representationlike that of athletes. No, there
was no real parallel really for me. I mean when I was running WCW
and we were running full seama head. You have to remember there were two

(01:53:29):
different companies. There was competition,and for me, being willing to negotiate
with agents and lawyers and being ableto speak their language was an advantage over
the WWE, who just refused toit gave me a distinct advantage in the
marketplace. And it wasn't until WWEbecame the only game in town that wrestling

(01:53:50):
managers for the most part ceased toexist. But when it was a competitive
environment, I actually preferred it becausethe level the playing field, level the
plainfield. How so could you couldyou extrapolate on that so I can understand
sure when if if an Asian representedyou, for example, and I was

(01:54:15):
willing to negotiate with you, Iwas willing to return your phone calling,
I was a willing to engage ina conversation with you and my competition wasn't
that that made it a lot easierfor me to do with you? With
you, I see had I had, I shut the door, So screw
that. I just still deal withAsians. I don't do with lawyers.
The talent wants to talk to me, they have to talk to me directly.

(01:54:38):
It it compromised my abilities to negotiatesuccessfully. That's interesting, and there
are parallels in MMA. I thinkof the fade or situation in some others
where you know, Data White haspublicly gone after or put down managers for
you know, complicating relationships with fightersand things. So definitely something that MMA
fans could pick up on there whatyou're saying. You know, of course

(01:55:00):
there are storylines and grudge matches andmixed martial arts. It's part of selling
fights as part of the pay perview business. But of course you can't
manufacture them whole cloth. The MMAfan will realize or pick up on if
you know a grudge is being sortof artificially created trying to sell them a
fight, you have to start withkind of a root of reality. And
that goes to something you talk abouta lot, particularly in your book about
what works in pro wrestling as well. You say, quote, if you

(01:55:24):
have a weak story and no reality, then you don't have anticipation because no
one really cares enough to anticipate it, And that word reality comes up over
and over again. I think thatmight be something too that folks who don't
follow wrestling underappreciate is is how importantit is eric in building a grudge match
or something that's going to sell ticketsor pay per views to have this sort
of underpinning of reality to it.Can you talk a little bit about that

(01:55:45):
well, I mean, the storybetween the reality is story. Again,
in the concess of MMA, wouldI would imagine that there already is reality.
There's no scripted sense to it.Finding two fighters who have enough have
enough history together that the audience canfind the arc in their story and have

(01:56:10):
a story there less longer than thirtydays or sixty days or ninety days.
That's a manufactured story. And againI go back to Ali and Frasier.
You know that was a long termThere was a lot of story there,
There was a lovely history there.And until MMA finds the type of fights

(01:56:30):
and that type of fighters that canhave that kind of long term story,
there is no reality other than themanufacturer reality that we try to create for
posters, and we try to tryto create for headlines on the ESPN.
We try to keep attention with.But you need a long term story to
the beginning, in the middle andan end if the audience can be compelled

(01:56:53):
to watch, and that's gonna behard to find it. Well, what
would you say are the qualities abouta feud in wrestling and maybe we can
extrapolate this in mma as well.The qualities of a feud in wrestling that
makes someone want to buy, thematch that makes someone want to buy to
see the resolution? What qualities arein that? Well, first off,
you have to set out with twocharacters that people care about. In this

(01:57:15):
most fator form, you have tohave a good guy. You have to
have a bad guy. Three secondingthat you need to have is a beginning
of the middle and an It's athree act play. It's no different than
a movie, a good movie,a good book, a good sitcom,
a good documentary. Anything that's worthwashing has a beginning in the middle of
an act or anything worth being entertainedby as a good beginning in the middle

(01:57:41):
of a good end with two cartersthat characters and can care about. It's
really that simple. It's not brainsurgery. There's no magic secret sauce.
It's a three act structure with twocharacters you care about. When you have
your MMA or fellow sort its lustyenough to find those two characters and that

(01:58:02):
story, they're going to strike holdUntil then they're just competing for, you
know, competing protention like everybody elsein the pay per view world. Does
that make wrestling and MMA and boxing, I guess to some extent different and
all of the other sports that areon television because what pay per view requires

(01:58:23):
you to do, and how youcreate stars and how you sell the sport.
It strikes me that if you know, the UFC or Bellator for that
matter, could count on the sameamount of revenue from a TV network that
they can from a pay per view, maybe the nature of the sport changes
a bit. Maybe there's less ofa need to focus on the things you're
talking about which make people buy afight. Maybe just the sport itself can

(01:58:44):
stand on its own, just likeMajor League Baseball or at the NBA and
and kind of do business that way. I mean, when it comes to
pay per view you know, isthat just something that dictates how all the
storylines are are crafted and how thecharacters are pitted against each other. You
know, I'm not really qualified tocomment on that which regard GAMEMA, because
honestly, the pay per view modelhas changed so drastically over the last five

(01:59:08):
years or ten years since I've beenclosely involved with it. I don't know
how the pay per view model worksanymore, can be very honest about it.
Energy. I focus all my energyon creating story, creating characters,
three act structures, long term planningof TV story. I really am not

(01:59:29):
closely involved in out flipping the payper view model to know how it may
apply to MMA and whether MMA shouldinvest itself of the traditional model for pay
per view and focus more on TV. I just don't know that. Let
me ask Eric, in your timerunning WCW, or maybe even now running
TNA, do you see a timewhen wrestling can be that, where wrestling

(01:59:53):
can sustain off of TV revenue andnot have to do pay per view like
the other sports. I don't thinkso now pay per view. When when
I was running WCW, when thingswere operating like a finally two new machine
twenty five percent of our revenue isfrom television licensing, twenty five percent of

(02:00:15):
from licensing and merchandizing, twenty fivepercent of it from live events, and
twenty five percent of it from paperview. It as a very potleged table.
I don't know what those percentages areanymore. I do know that pay

(02:00:36):
per view has gotten more competitive,it's gotten more difficult. I know WW
is feeling out up, but allyou have to do is look at w
wws um sec reports. I mean, pay per view is falling off.
It's still a very very it's amonster for for w view. I wish
I had there. I wish Ihad a fashion of the pay per view

(02:00:58):
numbers that they'd be at PA.But it's it's still trailing off because it's
got more competitive. From what Ihear, I don't know if it's true
or not. From what I hear, UFC's pay per view numbers are beginning
to trail off, and I thinkthat's in large part because, like everything
else in our culture, people areable to get their entertainment from so many

(02:01:20):
different sources nowadays that they're just notreliant upon pay per view like they used
to be. Five A cabinets twentyand threety years ago, our twenty five
years ago. They're not reliant upontelevision to het they're they're entertainments the way
they were five or ten or twentyyears ago. So I think the entire

(02:01:40):
model was changing literally under our noseevery day. Yeah, yeah, certainly
we see a lot of different iterationsof it. We see Internet pay per
view being experimented with a great length, and the thought that someday there maybe
no difference between watching pay per viewon cable or satellite and watching pay per
view on the internet also is inthe offering. It's it is changing very
appidly, and I think you know, everyone's trying to get ahead of that

(02:02:01):
curve. When it come to themerchandising side. You mentioned Derek licensing being
twenty five percent of the revenue ofWCW, and I know you know from
tracking your story and how you managedWCW, that there was a time,
particularly when you first took over,and the company was really in dire straits
from a revenue standpoint. There wasreally no licensing to speak of. There
wasn't really all that many opportunities todo toys or video games or the other

(02:02:23):
kind of things that can be sokey to licensing when you're in a character
driven business light like pro wrestling,and and you know, it's kind of
in its infancy in mixed martial arts. There's always been you know, sponsorship
money and things available. But asfar as the company, the UFC itself
kind of driving the merchandising and thelicensing opportunities, that's that's relatively new,
and there starts and stops in thatregard, and it's trying to get all

(02:02:44):
figured out. But but I wonderit to you ideally because it was something
that you really wanted to get toWCW. It wasn't that you were content
that there weren't licensing opportunities or alot of merchandising when you started. It
was something you believed in very muchwhat you think is the ideal blueprint in
terms of revenue sharing, in termsof, you know, what incentivizes talent
to push them their merchandise, toto move it out there. But at

(02:03:05):
the same time, you know,you talk about the importance of good guys
and bad guys. You can't havethe so called bad guy out there trying
to push merchandise all day either.You know a bad guy wouldn't care about
that. I don't even that's notthat's not the end at all. The
challenge with merchandise in MMA is thatit's a three year process. If Joe

(02:03:27):
Blow becomes a star today, ittakes two to three years for the rest
of the world that catch up tohim, or as a licensable merchandise to
both character. You just can't clankout action figures in tshirts and get them
into the distribution and expect Walmart andj c Unnier, Kmart or whoever to

(02:03:48):
make a big commitments for big ordersof a piece of talent that won the
title yesterday when everybody knows there's agood chance you're going to lose it a
month from now. That's the challenge. Who is your star? That's we're
wrestling. That's where wrestling eclipses MMA. And the fact that Misty Fan or

(02:04:09):
disc Carter to make up their mind, or if the shof at today can
make up their mind. I amgonna make Goldberg my start. I'm gonna
make Cold Cold In my start.I'm gonna make Sting my star. And
I can hand a three year planand I can stick to that plan,
and I can tell my license licenses, I'm going to stick to that plan.

(02:04:30):
I can tell retailers, I'm goingto stick to that plan. Those
individuals can go to conventions and telleverybody we're going to stick to that plan,
and we're going to promote that plan. You can't do that at MMA,
can't do it, but you havecan become the star fellow tour can
become the start, but no fighterunderneath that umbrella, no character can become

(02:04:53):
that start because they're not wrong longenough. That's the problem. Shelf life
is certainly much there is no questionabout it, especially if you contrast it
to the absolute biggest you know,movers in the pro wrestling world in terms
of merchandise. I mean, youknow, their time on top is so
much more prolonged for you know,obvious reasons. Well, one of the
things that's interesting to hear you talkabout in your book, Eric is the

(02:05:15):
relationship with the media and how itevolved over the course of managing WCW.
You talk about when you signed HulkCogan in nineteen ninety four. It was
a big move and it made alot of waves and really it was a
it was a deep dive for WCWand Turner Ted Turner's Empire, which turn
Broadcasting owned WW at the time.Um, you know, the play was
really to get free advertising in away, because you thought press coverage would
come with the name Hulk Cogan andthat would you know, kind of transfer

(02:05:39):
prestige to the brand and kind ofmake WCW, you know, heightened in
the eye of the fan. Andyou had a sense that it was it
had a dingy kind of dark reputation, a second tier reputation before that.
And when it comes to relationships withthe media, it's something that is tracked
very closely in terms of Dana White'srelationship with the media, very open to
them, very a lot of giveand take with the media and things like
that. He's very good in thatregard. Yet sometimes it can drive them

(02:06:00):
absolutely off the wall. And almostone might say, take his eye off
the ball if you know, themedia, if the tenor of the media
coverage takes a certain slant or acertain kind of you know, critical eye
towards what he's doing, you know, justified or not. Not saying just
critical is necessarily right, you know. I wonder when you manage an organization
like that, what your sense wasof the role of the media because it

(02:06:21):
was clear on the one hand thatyou wanted to engage them to get buzz
going about your product, but atthe same time, if you engage them
too much, then they thought theyknew everything and they pissed you off.
I think you're probably talking about twodifferent levels of media. I think,
right, there's the mainstream media andthere's the guys that live in their basement

(02:06:43):
try to convince everybody that they knowwhat they're talking about. You know,
I always engage mainstream media and didn'tquite honestly care too much about what they
said as long as they said it. It's, you know, the three
guys living in you know, somebody'sbasement trying to pretend they know a lot
about a business they know nothing about. That I always, you know,

(02:07:08):
had an issue with and that's truetoday. I mean, there are you
know, guys who write that havewrestling websites who I respect, you know,
Jason Powell being one of them.Every once in a while, Waite
Keller has an epiphany and I feelwrite something that I think maybe he's kind

(02:07:28):
of found himself. But for themost part, and everybody else writes these
wrestling websites, kind of like MMAwebsites, who are trying so hard to
convince people that they know something aboutsomething they know nothing about, that it
distorts the reality of the industry.And I think that's a disservice to the

(02:07:51):
you know, compassionate fan base thatthey're trying to, you know, in
gear they're ided the incredibility with.But there are two different audiences, you
know. When when I'd run inhaull Covid, I wanted and by the
way, I did the same timeI did a deal with hul Covid,
I did a view with MGM Disneyexcuse me, Disney Disney Studios, and

(02:08:13):
I did a deal with yeah,MGM Studios that I did subsequently with Universal
Studios. I wanted those headlines.I wanted Mickey Mouse and haul Covid in
the same headline. Now did Iknow that wrestling fans were going to go,
oh my god, I can't believewrestling and Mickey Mouse in the same
headline. I knew I took ityet, but I also knew commercially from

(02:08:35):
an advertising standpoint, it was agood thing. So I was willing to
take that yet. But I neverreally did a damn about one two guys
in her basement thought about anything Idid. Still though, well, when
you when you talk about distorting thereality of the industry, um, it
confuses me in a way because ifthey're so, if they're so insignificant and

(02:08:56):
so not worthy of consideration, thenhow how do they wield that kind of
power to actually change anyone's perception ofthe industry If they're so, if they're
such bottom feeders in the first place, well, they're bottom feeders in the
sense that they really don't know they'reasked from from a bag of rocks.
They've become powerful, and it becomesdifficult and challenging within the industry because unfortunately,

(02:09:18):
when don't give you this is abad example, but it's an example.
If I go through a network andI want to fetch a wrestling show,
and that ust and that executive ina network who knows nothing about professional
wrestling, who knows nothing about MMA, Google's MMA, or Google's wrestling,

(02:09:41):
and some kiss aunt who's living inhis mother's basement who's never been laid writes
a story that is negative about MMAor negative about professional wrestling, and that's
what that executive reads. Guess whatthe infession is just over that executive.
Just that executive just buys that.That executive just allows that to sway his

(02:10:03):
or her impression way, way moreway, more often than he would care
to believe. I've seen it fortwenty five years. I saw it.
I saw it in Turner before therewas the Internet, and it was just
a dirt sheet. When you know, vps of programming were making decisions,
not because they had any idea ofhow the business works, not because they

(02:10:26):
had any idea of how our brandworked, not because they paid any particular
attention to anything other. They wantedto look smart, so they subscribed to
a dirt sheet so they could seewhat somebody else said about the business way
to dirt sheet being a precursor tothe Internet. Yeah what what what?

(02:10:46):
Dave Meltzer made his living off pubbefore he became a so called MMA expert.
There's a guy that couldn't find hisway out of the web. Paper
bag, has never been in afight in his life, but yet he's
all of a sudden can them mayactually I take a question to that.
Well, I have to say,Eric, in reading your book, it's
like you mentioned the dirt cheats everyother page. I thought they weren't.

(02:11:09):
They weren't worthy of your of yourmind, of your brain space, or
of your consideration. You talk alot about him. You just asked the
question. I didn't bring it up. You did. No, No,
I mean in the book, inthe book, that's an important part of
rustling. Yeah. Yeah, it'san important part of my perspective. As
I said, I watched senior executivesin an internal broadcasting, very senior executives,

(02:11:33):
wow, make horrible decisions based onthe influences of input from breed parties
who literally couldn't get a job atWalmart. Wow. Yeah, I can
see how that would be a frustratingelement of things, and perhaps that might
illuminate a little bit of why,you know, when someone goes off and
write something like that, it getsto Dana White because it comes back to

(02:11:54):
him when he's talking to his TVpartners and others who might not you know,
really have the most discerning eye forinformation, and you know, puts
concerns on the table that to him, he knows are kind of manufactured to
get attention on the internet as opposedto, you know, being a reflection
of what's actually happening. Very,very helpful insight there. And and you
talk about TV executives executives in general, and how you have to interface with

(02:12:15):
them and getting an operation like ProWrestling re MMMA going and really you know,
clicking and making real money. Um. It's always talked about how the
real decisions that influenced the history ofof pro wrestling and Mix Marshal Larch but
that matter are made not so muchin the matchmaker's suite, but uh,
you know in TV boardrooms in termsof you know, television executives giving the
green light to allow anyone to havethe platform, a showcase, an idea

(02:12:35):
that could catch on and make money. And you talk, and you tell
a great story about how Ted Turnerhimself, at one point at a meeting
where you plan on pitching something totallydifferent in international TV deal, blurts out
suddenly you didn't expect this. Whatdo we need to do to be competitive
with Vince McMahon. Um. Andyou know there was a history there with
with Vince and Ted Turner, andthere perhaps that was an undercurrent of why
Ted wanted so directly to compete withthe WWF. We kind of saw something

(02:12:58):
SIMI when when the UFC left Spikeand Philipdeman at Viacom authorized buying into Bellatoor
and really propping up Bellatour, givingthem a very prominent clearance and a lot
of resources. It might be somethingsimilar there as well, in terms of
you know, history and trying totry one up each other. And that's
healthy. But can you talk abouthow important it is to get the buy
in from a TV executive like thatfor a for a sports entertainment company.

(02:13:22):
I mean, it's so important,and I wonder if you could help kind
of communicate that in terms of thedifference it made at WCW. Well,
WCW isn't the situation because Ted Turnerowned not only does the franchise, but
he owned the network that it wason. So there's no real parallel here
except for I guess now I onecould argue that since Viacom does, oh

(02:13:45):
no an interest in Bellatore, that'sthe probably is that same fire to that.
Look, you can't exist as amainstream sport as a support property without
a good television part. You can't. It's impossible. So I don't know
how to say it any other wayI cut it anymore clearly, you can't

(02:14:07):
exist in this country as a viableentertainment property without the television. I've always
just varying really into the wrestling worldhere in kind of a Wonkish wrestling question.
I've always wanted to ask you this. Do you think the success of
the nWo angle, which took offin nineteen ninety six and was a smashing

(02:14:28):
success and was a huge part ofwhy WCW was able to do such great
ratings for such a long span,do you think part of the initial appeal
the very first day one appeal ofthe nWo was perhaps tricking people into thinking
that the WWF themselves was sending ScottHall and Kevin Nash to Nitro that in
fact, what they were seeing,if they were WWF fans over the years,

(02:14:48):
was WWF guys literally invading the TVshow. Do you feel like that
was part of what was going onthere. I think that's been the man's
version of it. Yeah, butI think I mean, everybody knew that
Scott Hall was in WCW before hewent to WWE. Everybody knew that Kevin
Nash left WCW to go to theWWE. Everybody knew that they left with

(02:15:11):
a bad attitude. So when theycame back for vengeance. It was believable.
That was the essence of that.That was the promise of that story.
We were treated badly, so weleft. Now we're big stars and
we're coming back to kid your ass. It's really us and anybody that layers
more complexity upon that is doing sofor their own argument. It was a

(02:15:37):
very simple story and that's why itworked. It was revenge. Somebody told
me once, it's really only sevenstories that I've ever been told in the
history of our culture. They've justbeen told thousands of hundreds of thousands of
different ways. That was a storyabout revenge. I was here and treated
me like shit. I left,I'm a star. I'm going to come

(02:15:58):
back and make you fay that ThenWo storyline curious and it worked because it
was simple. Most storylines work becausethere's sport people can relate. One of
the things you've been very honest aboutand looking back over WCW and it's evolution,
it's rise, it's fall, wasthe fact that you know, look
this this product can be overexposed.You know, when when TBS wanted to

(02:16:20):
add Funder, which was another twohours of live television, you had to
produce every week on top of Nitro, which had expanded to three hours.
It was a significant you know,you weren't sure if you could take it
on. You did take it on, but it was a significant drain and
demand on, you know, resourcesthat were already very tight and running very
lean and running very fast in termsof putting television together. And it's a

(02:16:41):
it's a big debate in mixed martialarts, Eric, because the UFC is
expanding very aggressively. It's trying toopen up new international markets. It sees
this sport as something that can justbe going on everywhere all the time,
and it doesn't have to be somethingthat considers, you know, overexposure as
a problem, just like no otherprofessional sport does. Yeah, wrestling fans
who also love MMA can appreciate thatthere is such a thing as overexposure,

(02:17:05):
especially when you hang on TV ratingsand pay per view buys. And I
wonder if you could just speak tothe you know, how it tuned you
have to be to overexposure and howimportant it is to try to avoid it.
I'm sitting here right now watching theNBA game in a restaurant in Chicago
knowing that I really don't give Idon't give a damn about the outcome of

(02:17:26):
this game, because I know they'regonna be about one hundred and forty more
of them before it really matters.Now, if I was a hard club
and be a fan or just myparticular team and I really care, I
might go differently. But as amainstream fan of vest Fall or any any
sport, I know I'm watching agame, just like when I watch baseball

(02:17:48):
and lately when I'm watching football,I really don't care about the outcome.
It's any given Sunday, about onehundred and forty days of the year,
it's any given Sunday, and itreally doesn't matter until the last couple of
games. Look at NASCAR, youknow, look a look at what's happened
at the ratings of NASCAR over thelast three or five years. Five years

(02:18:11):
ago, you couldn't go anywhere withoutbeing inundated with NASCAR this or NASCAR that,
or merchandise or mainstream media or movies. I don't think anybody cares about
NASCAR anymore other than a hardcore NASCARfast because I think they over exposed it.
I do think over exposure is acritical issue, and it's one of

(02:18:31):
the things that I quite honestly,but I'm not here to appear to show
for Fellator or I br Redney.But they found a different way to present
that product, that tournament format,and it's more than a tagline. It's
the toughest tournament in sports. Theyfound a way to present the MMA that's

(02:18:56):
different and unique and interesting. Tome, it's far more interesting because of
the tournament formattic. If it wasjust another UFC show or another MMA show
or strike for show before a stripefirst is in MMA, I really couldn't.
I wouldn't give two ships. Butbecause it's a tournament, I can
relate to that, and the statesare higher and the reality is different.

(02:19:18):
It matters to me. But justmore MMA for the sake of more MMA.
I think when you do that,the quality of the fighters are going
to it's going to become deluded.I don't care what anybody says. You're
not. Instead of finding that breakoutstart, you're going to make hundreds more

(02:19:39):
average guys. You're gonna need them. You're gonna need them to fill up
television time, and the quality ofyour product is going to go down over
time because you're filling up television time. If there's Yeah, if there's TV
stations out there willing to give youmoney though to put shows on. If
there's you know, business partners overand overseas markets willing to pay you to

(02:20:01):
put on shows, if the fansare giving you indications that there's a demand.
If you have more fighters, thenyou have spots on shows. It's
kind of tough, isn't it toturn down that money just to preserve overexposure?
Yeah? Sure is. It's adifference between somebody who thinks short term
and somebody who thinks long term.But of course it's difficult. It's always
difficult to turp out money always,it's needless to say. And are you

(02:20:26):
saying that's kind of necessary in termsof the overexposure equation. Sometimes you have
to turn down opportunities to make ashort term buck. Do you have to
have a long term plan. Youhave to have the difference between the short
term gain and a long term plan. What do you think motivated Ted Turner
to ask for Thunder on TBS?That that's part of the history of WCW
that I always was curious about whatwhy did they want thunder? They looked

(02:20:52):
at they meaning the executives with thecncoruing GBS. They looked at the success
of Nitro and they didn't understand whatit took to get it there. And
they said, hey, go replicatethat over here, because we want the
numbers, we want the audience.You did it over there, go do

(02:21:13):
it over here, and they don'tunderstand the business. I fought it.
I fought it hard. I meanI literally fought it all the way up
to Ted Turner, which is afight I knew I wouldn't win, but
I took it all the way toTed and trying to talk to about it.
Obviously I lost that fight, butit was a mistake. I knew

(02:21:35):
it was going to be a mistake. But when you have a whole room
full of executives and count beings don'treally understand when you wants is in the
business, don't understand the business.All they wanted was success, right,
And they saw that you were ableto achieve it and thought, you know,
obviously you have the the Midas touch. You can do it over and
over and over again. And it'seconomies of scale, right, I mean,

(02:21:56):
you know, it's it works inthat universe, it works with that
commitment, it works with that muchtime to produce in front of you.
But you know, if you justyou know, uh, try to stretch
that out, it's going to justdelude everything. I suppose it's it's an
economy of scale in theory, butit's not an economy and scale in terms
of the energy and the resources andeverything gets too to make it happen.

(02:22:18):
That's that's that's where the that's wherethe rubber left the road, so to
speak. There was a time whenWCW was so so healthy, so dominant
in the wrestling business, and hadVince McMahon and his promotion in a position
no one ever thought they'd be inin terms of looking at, you know,
actual losses over the course of ayear and really sweating the numbers and
sweating how much longer they could continuerunning the ship the way they had been

(02:22:41):
doing it. Um that it wasprobably unimaginable for a lot of wrestling fans
and man or there are a lotof fans in the late nineties that were
brought to the table by the aforementionedwoStone Cold Steve Austin the Monday Night Wars
all that great energy in the latenineties, m who probably thought it would
never happen that w W would goout of business, let alone go out
of business, you know, intwo thousand and one, just a few

(02:23:01):
short years after that peak period.And a lot of times I think a
MMA, Eric, it's kind oftaken for granted that the UFC, it
will always be here, it haseverything figured out in terms of how to
actually make money in this business,and that you know, it would take
such a series of disasters and catastrophesto cut into that action that you just
never consider that the UFC one daymight have trouble making ends meet. It

(02:23:24):
just doesn't strike you. But wrestlingfans know right that the difference between the
peak and the downfall, it's avery subtle, very slippery slope. The
audience is very pickle and MMA needsto be very careful, the UFC belatoir
needs to be very careful that they'representing a product that is relevant, that

(02:23:46):
keeps the audience's imagination, because ifthey don't, someone else will. And
we have We've seen it over andover and over again. Yeah, yes,
especially today, especially when there's somany options for the entertainment dollar or
the entertainment eyeball. A technology ischanging as much as quickly as it is

(02:24:09):
changing. If anybody who thinks they'vegot a lock of your audience is sadly
underestimating the audience in the business thatthey're in, you can change in a
heartbeat. It really can. Andit's true, isn't it that once you
start to notice the signs of adecline in some ways, it may be

(02:24:31):
too late to reverse it, tomake a move, change a match,
change a featured star, do somethingto reverse it. It's almost like when
you start to see the signs ofdecline, you've missed the chance to prevent
it. I'm a firm believer inmy other businesses, which which are quite
successful. One of the things thatI've preached to my staff, my partner

(02:24:52):
will preach use it back to meis we have to stay nimble. He
who can move quickly and can adjustto the market will survive. Once you
get so big, it's like turningthe Queen Mary, you're fucked. Sorry
it's a radio, but I appreciatethe frankness. Now we're open to that.

(02:25:13):
Sure, um. And it's youknow, your firsthand on that.
I mean, I got to askyou, you know how, I don't
know, it's it's it's such abroad it's not a fair question to just
say what happened to WCW. Maybeif I can narrowly tailor it this way,
what were your thoughts when the doorsclosed in two thousand and one,
just a few short years after suchsuch incredible business. Oh, I wasn't

(02:25:37):
really there at the time, allright, Yeah, to me, it
was just sad. But there's abook How Colsman Fools Rush In And it's
a perfect It's a perfect book foranybody who want to read, for anybody
who's really interested and what happened toWCW, or what could happen MMA,

(02:26:00):
or what could happen in Nascar?Just read that book. It's a perfect
book in the sense that it talksabout what happens when corporations and decisions that
were frequently made by entrepreneurs and peoplewho had a first hand feeling for a
business were reduced to members of acommittee who were part of a committee,

(02:26:26):
who was part of the board,who was part of the committee, who
made a decision about who was goingto be on the committee to make a
decision. It's it's a perfect exampleof what happens when you grow too big
and you don't let the people whoreally understand the business who run the business.
And it wasn't just true for anWCW. It's by the way,
CNN, who used to be asa leader in cable news, is hardly

(02:26:48):
a blip on the raider. Everybusiness unit within in Turner Broadcasting suffered as
a result from the AOL time bythe way, all doesn't even exist anymore.
Ins off the door alo they boughttime warn and A well doesn'teople exist.
That's that's heavy stuff. Yeah,that that a company could have that

(02:27:11):
much buying power Eric and then justa few you know, just a decade
later not even exist. That shouldtell you in a lot of ways,
not only would happen to WCW,but what happened to the entertainment business still
happen now when we talk about thattime period. I was wanted to know
because, as you said, youweren't in WCW in the last I guess

(02:27:35):
year or six eight months whenever itwas that it went under um where you
know what position you were in.I know you were putting together a group
that was going to make a bidto purchase WCW. But after executives at
TBS made the decision that they didn'twant it on their TV station anymore.
It really had no value to anybodybut Vince McMahon. Without a TV slot
in Vince McGannon ended up buying WCWS. As a lot of folks know.

(02:27:58):
But that night, that final nightthat they did UM in Florida, it
started. It was one of thestrangest nights ever. It started with Vince
McMahon's smiling face on t NT onthe beginning of Nitro. Um, you
know, just welcoming everybody to toNitro. And did you watch that?
And if you did, what didyou think about it when you were watching
it? Um, I don't thinkI watched that. I was those I

(02:28:24):
had watched that episode. I didsee an episode shortly thereafter, I believe,
where Tean millencol and Edig Warl andVerry Sanderd and everybody showed up on
the show. Yeah, that wasa little weird. UM. I was
with my wife. I was Ihad my own plane at the time where
we were literally flying back from Wyomingon our way to u Atlanta, and
I stopped off in Minneapolis to wasa family and I was sitting in the

(02:28:48):
hotel bar or restaurant who was itwas on the television. I couldn't hear
it and I could see it,and that was kind of surreal. But
you know, by the time itall went down, I had literally wash
my hands of it. Yeah,I don't. I don't live in the
past. I don't worry about thingsI don't have any control over. And
the bullet left barrel on that deal. So I just moved on. But

(02:29:11):
you know, it was a littleweird see people who I was hold.
You know that I never thought i'dsee in a w W ring in at
w w ring, but it onlylasted for a hard feat or two.
Yeah, yeah, when you werein the WWE. I just want to
ask you one thing about that time. One angle that they did, one
show closing scene that they did.What is the story Eric behind h LA.

(02:29:37):
I. I don't know when Imade the decision to go. I
honestly don't when I made the decision, you know, to go to the
w w E, I no punintended. I wrestled with it. Yeah,
I'd debated for you know, aday or two whether it was what
I wanted to do, because Iknew that I was going to go from

(02:29:58):
being the guy who called the shotsto being a performer. And my own
personal belief is once you sign onthe valid line, when you agree do
a deal, you live. Youlive with that deal. Whether it's a
good, bad or i'd do,you live with it. And I knew
that when I went to WWD,I was going to be a performer and

(02:30:18):
I was going to be asked todo things that I either didn't like,
didn't agree with, didn't understand,or did life and didn't agree with.
But I didn't get the vote,just the way I believe, when you're
a talent, you're saling. Whenyou're a director, you're a director.
And I knew that I was goingfrom being a director to speak to being
a talent. So when that storycame along, I just don't know.

(02:30:43):
I didn't think about it too much. I just figured, all right,
how can I perform it to thebest of my ability? But beyond that,
I didn't ask him questions. Idon't know whose idea was. I
don't know what the motivation was.I don't know. If somebody was getting
a yuck in the corner, youknow, yeah, it would be I
don't know. I don't know.It's one of the strangest, strangest things

(02:31:07):
I've ever seen in all my yearswatching wrestling. And for those who don't
know, HLA stands for Hot LesbianAction and you can kind of surmise the
rest in terms of what may haveoccurred in that show closing segment one week
on Raw. Close Close with this, Eric, Let's let's let's look at
what the future is for wrestling inMMA. I wonder what you think the
cutting edge is. I wonder ifyou think there's any kind of game changing

(02:31:31):
technology or ways of looking at thebusiness, or ways of monetizing the business
that you've got your eye on thatmight transform things, Or is the way
money made in this business right nowpretty much the way it will be made
for the foreseeable future. You know, I'm certainly not. You know,
I'm a cutting edge of technology.So I don't know if there's some new

(02:31:52):
delivery mechanism, I don't know ifthere's some new eye tech opportunities out there.
That's when you be the game changerfrom my point of view. Yeah,
you know, I six to thefundamentals. People like to watch good
guys guys, people like to watchaction, people like to watch intentity and

(02:32:13):
one way shape or form. ProfessionalWrestling MMA Boston are always going to be
there and the delivery system will change, but the appetite within our cultures probably
never will. So I'm just goingto sit back and watch as well.
We we don't have much of achoice. Definitely though. See changes under

(02:32:37):
the watch of Eric Bischoff, whorode a wild wave as executive president ex
excuse me, executive producer of WorldChampionship Wrestling and today an executive producer at
TNA, which of course comes onon Thursday nights on Spike before Bellatoor Fighting
Championships. Joining us tonight on theSRN rewind to take a look at the
two worlds and what's different and what'sthe same, Eric Bischoff, It was

(02:33:00):
a pleasure to have you on theshow. Eric, thanks so much for
your extended attention and best of luckwith everything going forward. Thank you very
much, hi joyed. The shirDog Radio Network rewind as a t J.
De Santis production and his property ofthe shir Dog Radio Network. Its
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