Who Killed WCW Seasion 1 Ep 2
Who Killed WCW Seasion 1 Ep 2
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00:00In the early 90s, we couldn't attract an audience.
00:11I needed people to take WCW seriously.
00:14We needed a star.
00:15Hulk Hogan is here!
00:16You can call this the new world order of wrestling, brother!
00:23I don't think I'd ever seen anything as hot as NWO.
00:25They were banned, but they were cool.
00:28It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling.
00:31Oh no!
00:32WCW was now beating WWF in the ratings.
00:35Have we created a monster or what?
00:38Shit's gonna hit the fan at some point, and it did.
00:42It was a company that was infested with guys that had their own agenda.
00:46Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.
00:48Hulk Hogan was the puppet master.
00:50Once a god, always a god.
00:55You cannot sweep this under the rug.
00:57This is a fucking television show.
00:59I don't understand what he's doing.
01:00The real reason men come in lies.
01:09Ladies and gentlemen, you are tuned in to the world's number one professional wrestling program.
01:15By 1997, we had built so much goodwill with the audience.
01:20As a result of the NWO, we were absolutely on fire.
01:25When it rains, it pours!
01:29For 83 weeks straight, WCW Nitro defeated WWE.
01:34And then all of a sudden, boom.
01:41I get a phone call.
01:44It's Harvey Schiller.
01:46He's the president of Turner Sports, and by proxy, you could say WCW.
01:51So I answered it.
01:52Hey, Harvey, how you doing?
01:54I'm good, how are you?
01:55I said, I'm good.
01:56Before you hang up, I want to let you know,
01:58Nitro was having so much success on TNT,
02:01Ted wants to do another primetime show for TBS.
02:08I hung up the phone, I thought, this can't be real.
02:11They weren't happy enough with the ratings they had.
02:15They wanted to expand,
02:17not realizing you're going to weaken the Monday show.
02:21I mean, things were going so well.
02:24You're giving them such a great show on Monday night
02:27that the idea of doing another show live,
02:3048 hours after I just got done producing one,
02:33there was no way I thought it could work.
02:37But I didn't want to be the guy to tell Ted, no.
02:41That was my mistake.
02:43Tonight, we welcome you to Thunder!
02:46TBS said, sure, we'll take the show.
02:48We just don't have it in our budget.
02:50We can't pay for it.
02:51So reluctantly, we just paid for it on WCW's budget.
02:55That's what Ted wants.
02:57The challenge, right off the bat, audience fatigue.
03:01Because now they're seeing too much of the same talent.
03:04Who's who? I don't know.
03:06Even though we had a very deep roster,
03:08if we're going to do another show, I thought,
03:10that roster has to be substantially unique.
03:13That's why I brought Bret Hart in.
03:17Bret!
03:22I was at the top of the heap of the WWF during those days.
03:27I beat Undertaker for the title.
03:29I beat Stone Cold Steve Austin.
03:33I was a WWF guy,
03:35and I think I was a big part of the success that I had.
03:40I like Bret. A lot of respect for that man.
03:44Bret Hart, somebody I probably had my best matches with.
03:48Also respect.
03:50I loved Bret Hart. He was like a national hero in Canada.
03:54People respected him. People looked up to him.
03:57I emulated some of my style from Bret Hart.
04:01Like my suplex.
04:03Bischoff says, what's it going to take for you to come to WCW?
04:08Bret!
04:09We got up to $2.8 million a year.
04:12Bret!
04:13So I joined WCW.
04:15Bret, the Hitman Hart has arrived!
04:19First night I walked out, I got a great reaction.
04:24I needed an anchor for that show.
04:26Bret was critical to that.
04:29But it went downhill from there.
04:38It sounds to me like you people are a little disappointed in me.
04:42They're flying me down from Calgary,
04:44and then they tell me I'm off for the night.
04:47And the next week I do the same thing again.
04:50Just sit in the dressing room and do nothing.
04:53Eric, he apologized to me many times and said,
04:55I'm so sorry about how we brought you in.
04:58Everything he ever said was a lie.
05:01We already knew that we were running thin.
05:04You had Monday Night Nitro,
05:06and then you had two days that you had to do house shows.
05:08It's followed by a two-hour Thunder.
05:11We had a Saturday show.
05:14And then you might have a pay-per-view or something in there.
05:17You're basically booking ten hours in two days.
05:23It was impossible to have any kind of attention to detail.
05:27And I think it showed.
05:29I've never seen a human being do anything like this in my life!
05:32This has never been done in our sport!
05:34Sometimes we didn't have finishes for this or finishes for that
05:37because it was so time-consuming.
05:39Feds! We're out of time!
05:41When these guys are trying to think up something new,
05:43they're going to go to something that worked before.
05:46You know, NWO was still rocking and rolling,
05:49printing money and printing ratings.
05:51And as a result, we took the easy way out.
05:54We kept adding to the NWO.
05:56Let's create the red faction.
05:58We got some new colors going on!
06:00Let's create the Latino faction.
06:02The Latino World Order!
06:04You just can't pass t-shirts out and water down the greatest show in town.
06:10There were too many people. It wasn't cool anymore.
06:13If you watch one match, you watch them all.
06:17Every show ends with a run-in.
06:19There's about 20 guys running in there.
06:21And I'm going, why am I running in?
06:24Nothing made sense from one week to the next.
06:27And the fans discussed it, thumbs down.
06:30Unbelievable!
06:32Creating momentum is really, really hard.
06:36The only thing harder than creating momentum is maintaining momentum.
06:40Thanks for having me here, Mr. President-elect.
06:43We'd lost our momentum.
06:46And we find ourselves in a rebuild mode.
06:49April 13th of 1998, something significant happened,
06:53which was Raw beating Nitro for the first time in the ratings for 22 months.
06:58Whenever you're leading a night and now you're not leading a night,
07:02there's reason for concern.
07:05As WCW and Monday Nitro became a huge primetime hit,
07:11those numbers exploded because it wasn't just men 18 and 34.
07:16It now became families.
07:18So my eye was on Goldberg.
07:24I was born with something.
07:28I'm fucking 6'3", 280 pounds.
07:32I could go from 0 to 100 and 100 to 0 in 60 seconds.
07:37But what the business didn't have was something that I wanted to fill the void with.
07:43And that's the beauty of the character that we came up with.
07:47I am the fucking character.
07:50I am Goldberg.
07:52I am Goldberg.
08:01I don't think there ever had been an athlete,
08:06a star,
08:08a performer,
08:10in professional wrestling
08:13that rose as quickly as Goldberg.
08:18Bill Goldberg, he was on a rocket ship from day one.
08:25A professional wrestler was never anything I aspired to be.
08:29My entire life existence was to play football.
08:32I don't know if you know who this guy is, but I've got the picture.
08:35I know all about him.
08:37Bill Goldberg, former Georgia Bulldog and Atlanta Falcon.
08:42I was never the best football player by any stretch of the imagination.
08:45I got hurt, tore my abdomen off of my pelvis in 94.
08:50I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
08:53I was depressed as shit.
08:55When I finally seriously considered becoming a professional wrestler,
09:00I had to come up with something
09:02where I felt as though I was continually building upon what I had built.
09:08You strive to be the biggest, baddest dude on the field.
09:12I gave him the short black boots, black tights.
09:20He didn't talk.
09:28Mike Tyson, black boots, black shorts.
09:32Didn't need to talk, just come down and do that.
09:36He might bite your fucking ear off,
09:38or he might knock you out with an uppercut.
09:41You don't know what's going to happen.
09:47Maybe that's why it worked.
09:49The crowd was reacting to him like a superstar.
09:55It was like, holy crap.
10:01People were chanting his name, Goldberg, Goldberg.
10:08They pushed him like crazy.
10:10There's never been a push anything like it, anywhere.
10:13Let's just put him out there and have him squash people.
10:15Kept doing it, doing it, doing it.
10:17People kept loving it, loving it, loving it.
10:20Why would you mess with that?
10:22There were a lot of people jealous.
10:27Bill was a fan, Bill was a mark, Bill was a football player.
10:31Someone should have taught him or pulled him aside and said,
10:33hey Bill, you do know that this is pretend, right?
10:37He didn't.
10:40This is a fucking television show.
10:43I know when you tackle somebody, you think it's real.
10:47But the person getting fucking potatoed in the corner's had enough.
10:53I feel bad about it.
10:54But as long as the intent is not there, it's not my fault.
10:59You can't blame me.
11:01Jesus Christ, dude.
11:02Like, get some skills.
11:04A lot of jealousy.
11:05This guy hasn't paid his dues and Goldberg doesn't love this like we do.
11:10You know?
11:11They can all kiss my ass.
11:12I'll take that criticism on the way up because I'm still that guy.
11:17And you guys tried every fricking thing you could do for me not to be that guy.
11:22And who prevailed?
11:23And who prevailed?
11:27Please welcome, Goldberg!
11:31I felt that Goldberg was really the phenomena that could bring advertisers
11:38and all the other stuff that they're buying or they're consuming.
11:46The kids loved Goldberg.
11:47They loved that character.
11:49And they loved the fact that he was undefeated.
11:51All anyone ever wanted to talk about was Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg.
11:57So I'm in L.A. one day and I get a phone call from Hulk.
12:01I got an idea.
12:02I'm gonna wrestle Goldberg, Georgia Dome.
12:05We're gonna put him over clean.
12:07The time is right.
12:08This is the time.
12:09Let's do this.
12:10Nitro is on the air!
12:13From the professional wrestling capital of the world, Atlanta, Georgia!
12:18Bill Goldberg was a hometown hero.
12:20There he is.
12:21And here comes the eruption.
12:24Bigger than before!
12:26Guys from the Falcons were there.
12:28You know, former teammates.
12:29It felt like the Super Bowl.
12:31I mean, we sold out the Georgia Dome.
12:3344,000 tickets, man.
12:35That place was packed.
12:37It was electric.
12:38It was Nitro.
12:40This is the biggest one.
12:41That heightened sense of anticipation.
12:43Let the match begin!
12:4510 million people in the United States between Monday Night Raw and Nitro
12:50were zeroed in on professional wrestling.
12:54Mind-blowing.
12:56That really was
12:59the height of WCW.
13:04That was the coolest shit ever.
13:06The feeling that I got when I heard the crowd after I received the bell.
13:12Thank you! Thank you!
13:14We've got a new heavyweight champion!
13:18Nothing like it.
13:21It was just the coolest moment.
13:24Okay, why is this not on a pay-per-view?
13:27It's like, man, we could have made a lot more money
13:29if we'd have kept it off TV for a while.
13:31One of the things that I was criticized for
13:33was that I was putting pay-per-view quality matches on free TV.
13:37WCW is getting higher ratings than anything else in the company.
13:41This is the hottest product we've got.
13:44It didn't always advertise into the highest value
13:47that you could get for ad dollars.
13:49The disconnect between the advertising dollars
13:53and the size of the audience for wrestling became an issue.
13:58One of the forces working against ad revenue
14:01was our ad people wouldn't sell wrestling.
14:04They don't like it and they want to get rid of it.
14:06There's such pressure on here
14:08with opposition not only of the corporate
14:11but also the people that reported to him.
14:13I mean, he had no friends.
14:15We're going to take your paycheck!
14:17We're going to take your job!
14:19There was always a hint of ulterior motive
14:23which, at the end of the day,
14:25could maybe mean the destruction of your company.
14:29I don't know.
14:30I don't know.
14:43In the world of professional wrestling,
14:45any kind of fresh take on something is challenging to do.
14:49Back then, I was still opening match.
14:56Before the show ended, I was already back in my hotel room
14:59watching Nitro.
15:00I just wanted to see where they were doing things differently
15:04and figure out how we could do something like that
15:08or possibly even better.
15:14When you're getting your ass kicked week over week over week,
15:17which was our company,
15:18you're going to say,
15:19Hey, fuck this.
15:20What do we need to do?
15:22Welcome to WWF Raw!
15:26WWE's answer to NWO was the Attitude Era.
15:37Okay, first of all, I refer to it as the Nitro Era
15:40because the Attitude Era was nothing more
15:43than a replication of the Nitro format.
15:48They were going after the same audience
15:50that I recognized as being underserved.
15:54Okay, we're in a fight.
15:56We've been dominating that fight,
15:58but this guy's coming back.
16:00It wasn't like we were hurting.
16:02They were just getting stronger.
16:04I mean, 98 was a record revenue year,
16:06but all of a sudden, none of that mattered anymore.
16:13And that affected WCW in ways that I didn't anticipate.
16:18I was introduced to a different kind of corporate structure
16:23with regard to WCW.
16:29In July of 1998, I was sitting in a meeting
16:32with 10 or 12 other people,
16:35much higher in the food chain than I am,
16:37telling me how I was going to operate WCW
16:42and change our target demographic
16:45that we had built an entire business upon.
16:48He said, no, we want kids and families.
16:50What you really need for success
16:52is the people who are coming in on the outside.
16:54But there was a discussion about, you know,
16:56could they do it without being as lewd as WWE?
17:03Vince McMahon and the WWE decided,
17:05let's do what Eric's doing,
17:08and let's do it better than them.
17:10Oh, my God, he's on fire!
17:12That's exactly what they did.
17:15Ted Turner was very strict about things on the show
17:18that couldn't be done.
17:19Vince was quite happy to do all that.
17:21We will have less references to our enormous genitalia.
17:26They took it into the gutter.
17:28Doesn't matter, it worked.
17:30If Jenna Jameson's on the show,
17:32our rebuttal is, we'll give the guy an NWO shirt.
17:36I guess there's a new member now, huh?
17:38Everything we can possibly do to combat WWF
17:43they're taking away from us.
17:45Shut up, you idiot!
17:46We were being mandated to change the nature
17:49of the way we were producing our show.
17:51To go back to doing what we were doing
17:54when we couldn't even be a distant number two?
17:57I had taken the business out of the dumpster
18:00and turned it into a success story.
18:03Now all of a sudden, Standards of Practice
18:05is about to tell me what I can and can't do.
18:09Forget that.
18:10If push comes to shove,
18:12I'm just gonna fight all this
18:14until it gets to Ted's desk.
18:15And then it's gonna be me and this guy,
18:18and we'll see who wins.
18:19Like a wrestling match.
18:21You heard the man himself, Ted Turner.
18:23When you're winning and you're the guy,
18:26it's a lot of fun.
18:27And when you're losing, not so much fun.
18:30And it was hard on him at times, man.
18:32You could see it.
18:33Eric was always a really positive person.
18:36Really positive.
18:38And all of a sudden it shifted to negative.
18:41Don't show anything unless we tell you to show it!
18:44I found myself fighting with departments
18:47of Turner Broadcasting that I'd never heard of before.
18:50It took a lot out of me.
18:53One afternoon I was in my office
18:54and I was just out of gas,
18:56and Kevin came into my office.
18:58And he just, he was having such a hard time
19:02banging heads with everybody on everything.
19:06And Kevin offered.
19:07He said, boss, why don't you listen,
19:08let me take over the book.
19:10Temporary, get your feet back underneath you.
19:13Let me take this pressure off of you.
19:15The head booker was the one determining
19:18whether the concepts for each week's show
19:20actually made air or not.
19:21I think it's been fairly well acknowledged
19:23that Kevin Nash had been instrumental
19:25in being a huge part of the creative process.
19:28There were other people I could have handed it off to,
19:30but I had confidence in Kevin's instincts.
19:34So that's how it started.
19:35I said, I'll help you.
19:36I should have said, let's go to a strip club.
19:40There's a big difference between being part of a group
19:43that throws ideas out
19:46and being the guy that says,
19:48I know you don't want to do this,
19:50but this is what you're going to do.
19:52Especially if you yourself are a talent.
19:56It was a bad situation,
19:58but it was the best case scenario.
20:00It's quite simple.
20:01If you don't run with the pack,
20:03you're hunted by it.
20:06Once you have the monkeys running the zoo,
20:08you're in trouble.
20:10And that's exactly what was happening.
20:12Woo!
20:13He listened to all the guys that didn't have
20:15the best interest of the company in mind.
20:18I don't think that's debatable.
20:20It's not just about being the biggest, strongest.
20:23It's about whose ass they kiss.
20:27Sooner or later, someone will beat Goldberg.
20:30There wasn't any problem with Bill.
20:32I was happy that he was getting pushed,
20:35but he's had the belt too long.
20:38He was still really green
20:41and had no idea what he was doing.
20:43Goldberg hit the post!
20:45Not only does he keep hurting all the wrestlers
20:47that he works with, but he keeps hurting himself.
20:49I'm wrestling Scott Hall,
20:51and I screw a spot up.
20:53Oh!
20:55Scott Hall went down hard.
20:56And he's laying on the ground,
20:57and he looks up at me,
20:58and he goes, yo, man, what are you doing?
21:01And my reaction was,
21:04I don't fucking know what I'm doing.
21:07You're live on television.
21:09You're in front of your fans.
21:11I was scared shitless when I screwed that up
21:13because I didn't know what was next.
21:15I didn't know what to do.
21:17If you can't do that,
21:18you can't be the fucking top guy.
21:21That's a little new twist.
21:23That's when I really realized
21:26there was a lot of shit going on,
21:28and it wasn't all for face value.
21:31So that's when I started really smartening up to it.
21:34This document will represent the meeting
21:36of these two men at Starrcade.
21:39And this man whips him in the ring, doesn't he?
21:42Look at that.
21:43Oh, doesn't he?
21:44Yeah, I learned the good, bad, and the evil very quickly.
21:47I was jumping into shark-infested waters.
21:53To say the least.
22:01You in the world can't stop this man.
22:05Common fact.
22:07Wrestling 101.
22:09Babyface always draws more money
22:14chasing the belt
22:17than having the belt.
22:19Still undefeated here at WCW.
22:22The Sultan of Slams, Goldberg.
22:25It was a padded stat.
22:28Who cares?
22:29We gave the people what they wanted.
22:31We better take him in a different direction
22:33in order for him to grow.
22:35I never got tired of watching Mike Tyson
22:37come out and annihilate people.
22:39So with the Ray creative, there's ways to keep things going.
22:42That's what you do.
22:44You chase with the babyface.
22:47And when he fucking gets it, you take it right fucking back.
22:51Because that's where the money is.
22:54Kevin was a politician.
22:56There's nobody I've ever met that is a top talent
22:59that is not a politician.
23:01It's a job prerequisite.
23:04Just look at it on the surface
23:07from a pure physicality point of view.
23:11The way we had built Bill Goldberg up
23:14to be this indestructible, man-eating monster,
23:17who on that roster looked like they could possibly beat that monster?
23:22Goldberg's a move away from continuing the streak.
23:26And Kevin Nash, standing at nearly 7 foot, 6'10", whatever he is,
23:31probably at that time 340, 350 pounds.
23:35It was believable.
23:37Hook and finish!
23:39Touch! 1, 2, and he kicked away.
23:42What I needed was somebody who could tell a story with a finish.
23:47The finish I wanted was beat him 1, 2, 3,
23:50the same way he was winning.
23:52He took Nash off of his feet.
23:54Clean, but they thought that he needed something more to lose.
24:03What was that?
24:04That's one of those cases the police do.
24:06It's like a stun gun!
24:10No, that was a mistake.
24:13You watch that match back.
24:16When I powerbomb him...
24:18Wait a minute.
24:24I'm over as fuck.
24:26Look at this fans! 1, 2, 3!
24:30The streak is over!
24:31And we have a new world champion!
24:33The streak is over!
24:35Did I like it? Fuck no.
24:37Did I question it? Everybody questioned it.
24:39But I don't control that shit.
24:41I go out and I do my job.
24:44I think it was quite clear that there was no real plan
24:48in terms of where does the Goldberg character go from here.
24:51And so the follow-up left a bad taste in people's mouths.
24:54I'm going to try tonight to right the wrongs that happened at Starrcade.
24:59Me and you, Goldberg, in Atlanta for the belt!
25:03You have to imagine being in the audience on that night.
25:07It's January.
25:09There's an incredible atmosphere.
25:12At the same time, a taped edition of Raw was happening on the other station.
25:16There was going to be a title change on that show.
25:18What's up, guys? Right here tonight on Raw.
25:21First Nitro of 1999.
25:24It's The Rock! Mankind! The championship!
25:27Ladies and gentlemen, we set the stage for the biggest rematch
25:30in professional wrestling history.
25:32What we had to remind viewers that this is where the real action is.
25:35I say, fuck this.
25:37I'll fight Goldberg again.
25:40But that ends up taking a rather bizarre turn
25:43and devolving into a situation
25:45in which Hollywood Hogan comes back into the mix
25:48and challenges Nash to a match.
25:51After tonight, when I beat Kevin Nash,
25:55when I retire with a World Heavyweight title,
25:58you can just call me Hollywood the Big Bad Wolf!
26:05We were creating this illusion
26:08of a conflict between Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash.
26:11And we built it up like it was going to be the match of ages
26:14in the NWO to determine the fate of the organization.
26:18Hogan got to the ring and he looked all serious.
26:21Kevin Nash came to the ring and looked like he wanted to eat Hulk Hogan for lunch.
26:25And they get close together.
26:27They're almost chest-to-chest, nose-to-nose.
26:31And then...
26:34What was that about?
26:37What's going on here?
26:401, 2, 3, oh yeah, it looked like a finish.
26:44But it was contrived by the NWO, right,
26:47to keep the belt in the family.
26:50That's ultimately what it was all about.
26:52Get a saddle, baby!
26:54When that happened, me and a lot of wrestlers were like,
26:58what the fuck is this?
27:02Wrestling fans around the world were saying
27:05that's exactly when WCW started to go downhill.
27:08That's dirt sheet material.
27:10You know why people hate that so much?
27:13Because it got them.
27:15Look at the crowd.
27:17They don't know what the fuck they've seen.
27:20People expected to see something
27:22and they felt like they got fucked.
27:25WCW had chronic bad finish disease.
27:29Sometimes just a good, clean finish is the best thing.
27:34That same night, Mick Foley was going to be wrestling The Rock,
27:38as I often had with Nitro, and became famous for it,
27:41giving away their finishes, starting my show
27:432 minutes before they started their show.
27:45Mick Pryor is here now!
27:47I thought, why not go back to the well
27:50and give them a reason not to watch Rock and Mick.
27:54We understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here one time
27:57as Texas Jack, is going to win their world title.
28:01That fucking Eric Bischoff, he just spoiled the match.
28:06He took a shot.
28:09A big chunk of WCW Nitro's audience went,
28:12really, that's going on over there?
28:14I'm going too.
28:16And they left.
28:19So it backfired in a huge way.
28:23Two big moves in one night.
28:26Finger poke a doom and crap it all over Rock and Mick.
28:32Neither one of them worked very well.
28:36We got a little lucky that night.
28:39We had a great match, me and Mick.
28:42That was a real defining moment.
28:45This feels pretty damn good.
28:49I mean, there was a lot of mistakes, you know,
28:53but my check didn't change.
28:56The infighting, the jealousy,
28:58who is Eric going to listen to,
29:01all that started to disintegrate
29:04something that was so cool and hot.
29:08We were our own worst enemies.
29:10It was bad enough the Turner executives didn't want us.
29:14We did ourselves no favors.
29:17The end.
29:19The End.
29:25Now, a discussion about cable television programming.
29:28Can I go to wrestling for a second?
29:33Does it bother you a little bit that wrestling is so popular?
29:36I didn't know that was the promise of cable.
29:41Four years ago I went to a wrestling event
29:43and as we were going on the highway
29:45seeing people in pickup trucks, you know, going.
29:50A month ago, I went to a WCW Monday Nitro event.
29:55There were 40,000 people sold out in one hour,
29:58and all I'm seeing are families going.
30:01So we're not embarrassed by it at all.
30:05When you're a single organization
30:07and you do one thing, which is professional wrestling,
30:11it's very different than when you're
30:13a company like Time Warner.
30:15And you've got a lot of businesses
30:17that have to get sorted out.
30:19You're going to have people who kind of look at this
30:21and go, is this classy enough for our networks?
30:25How is that going to rub off on our brand?
30:28Well, wrestling may be a good product for some,
30:30but we are, after all, the world's leader
30:33in news and entertainment.
30:35And that was the rationale.
30:36We just don't like it.
30:38The fact that WCW became successful
30:42was really frustrating for a lot of people.
30:46It was not part of the plan.
30:48It never was part of the plan.
30:50You know, the average person would go,
30:51well, why would anybody care?
30:52And I'll tell you why.
30:53Because WCW occupied prime time beachfront property on TNT.
31:00There were a lot of people
31:00that wanted that prime time real estate.
31:03And were frustrated at our success because we got it.
31:07There were so many demands from different places
31:10and a lot of answering to shareholders
31:13that have expectations.
31:15And WCW got caught up in that.
31:19Well, the revenue challenges were simple.
31:21One of the goals of Turner Broadcasting
31:24was to enhance the bottom line of various divisions
31:29that they wanted to hold onto.
31:31Let's take some of their debt and move it over here.
31:33So they reallocated the guts out of my budget
31:36so that money could be moved over to other divisions.
31:39It made their bottom line look that much better.
31:42We'll recognize all those earnings at TBS.
31:46And because they do business with WCW,
31:48we're gonna move some of those losses over here.
31:51So WCW's books look a little worse
31:54because we want it to go away anyway.
31:57You could have probably made it profitable
31:59if WCW charged a boatload of money for carrying wrestling
32:05to TNT and to TBS.
32:07But because we wanted TNT and TBS
32:10to be much more profitable,
32:14the license fee we paid was very low.
32:19And that was not my decision.
32:24They didn't care if they had to sacrifice WCW.
32:26That's kind of what they wanted to do all along anyway.
32:29There were people deconstructing WCW
32:32from a budgetary perspective
32:33right underneath everybody else's noses.
32:38The reason we became so successful
32:40is what, in retrospect, looked like bad deals.
32:44The no-cut contracts, creative controls,
32:46and all those things were necessary
32:48to swing the immediate tide over.
32:50I guess you'd like me to sign that, wouldn't you, huh?
32:53Everybody was making seven figures plus.
32:57You see this?
32:58People know how much this guy's getting
33:00and they want to know why they're not getting as much.
33:03Just drew their money and did nothing.
33:05Oh, you work here?
33:06Oh, you've been collecting money
33:07for a year sitting on your ass.
33:09For six?
33:10I can only imagine how much money went out.
33:13Like, they got what?
33:16ATM, Eric.
33:17The inference was,
33:20well, Eric has access to Ted Turner's money.
33:22All he needs to do is write a check.
33:24He can hire anybody he wants.
33:26Like I was an ATM machine.
33:28I get to spend a billionaire's money!
33:31I got a call from Harvey Schiller.
33:33Harvey said, Eric, I need you to come up to my office.
33:36Now, Harvey very rarely summoned me to his office.
33:40Essentially, Harvey brought me in to let me know
33:44that I had been under a forensic investigation
33:48for misuse of funds.
33:52And I thought, this can't be real.
33:54Presumably, somebody had met an executive from Time Warner
34:01and laid out this crazy story.
34:04Eric, she's handing out million-dollar contracts
34:06right and left.
34:07But this individual suggested that the reason I was doing
34:10that is because those wrestlers were giving me a kickback.
34:14So Harvey proceeded to tell me how
34:17this forensic investigation proved
34:21that none of that was true.
34:23They wanted to come clean.
34:24And also to let me know it was complete bullshit.
34:28That pissed me off.
34:30I didn't quit my job.
34:31I wish I would have.
34:34That was the moment that I quit being loyal to the company.
34:42Fuck them.
34:50When I think back on my career, there's
34:52always been a little bitterness about that time period.
34:56I had so many things left unfinished in my career,
34:59things I wanted to do.
35:01To watch what WCW did with me, it was sad.
35:06They're killing me off on purpose.
35:09And they did.
35:10I've always known that sooner or later,
35:15I'd have to step in the ring with Bill Goldberg.
35:20How do you fight Bill Goldberg?
35:22He's like a gorilla, slamming guys right through the mat,
35:26running them over like a car.
35:28I would pull him aside and say, I
35:29want to teach you how to actually not hurt guys.
35:33And when I walked out to the ring with Bill that night,
35:36and I remember I really looked him in the eyes
35:39and said, don't hurt me out there.
35:41You need to trust me.
35:43And it all went in one ear, out the other.
35:46I really think Bill just saw me as another job guy, someone
35:50that was cannon fodder.
35:52If you're watching that match, Bill goes, watch the kick.
35:58And I'm like, what's the kick?
35:59And I don't understand what he's doing.
36:01He's done it by the referee.
36:02Oh!
36:03Standing side kick.
36:04He kicked me as hard as he could.
36:07You could see me grab my neck.
36:09I was concussed.
36:12You should protect yourself.
36:13You knew the kick was coming, right?
36:16It was in the deal.
36:17It was never talked about or explained to me.
36:20I do this move where I kick guys in the head as hard as I can.
36:23Nobody deserves that.
36:25But it was a frickin' accident.
36:26Complete accident.
36:28No, Bill, that's not an accident.
36:30That's a career-ending injury, you idiot.
36:33I somehow will myself to stand up
36:35to be run over by this imbecile.
36:39It was one of the saddest days of my life.
36:42And I knew my career was over.
36:44He'd never aspired to do anything else
36:45other than be that guy.
36:47And I ended that for him.
36:49I've never been so remorseful.
36:51And I have been for years.
36:52But fuck, man, I can't do anything else.
36:56Bill Goldberg was not qualified.
36:58But he's our star.
37:01They just look the other way.
37:04And you go through the type of brain injury
37:06that I went through.
37:07You're just grateful to be alive.
37:10From the very, very first second that I got here,
37:13I got screwed over and screwed over and screwed over.
37:20It was just such a lousy ending for such a great career.
37:25Ladies and gentlemen, he claims to be the best.
37:28It just shows that WCW never really appreciated
37:30or understood the talent that they had.
37:34They dropped the ball with me.
37:36And he knows it.
37:37And I know it.
37:38And fans know it.
37:40In the end, Eric Bischoff only can answer to himself.
37:47By the summer of 99, I was toast.
37:49I was frustrated, angry, demoralized, lost hope.
37:55Once you lose that, it's pretty much over.
37:58And that's where I was at.
37:59I was pretty disrespectful, intentionally,
38:02because I always thought I had Ted's support
38:04in my back pocket.
38:07And I didn't know what was going on with Ted.
38:10So in October of 1996, the Turner-Time Warner merger
38:15was finalized.
38:17And famously, Ted Turner was not receptive to the idea at first.
38:21Big, huge company, a lot of money for dad.
38:24They needed him, and he needed them.
38:26But he deluded himself.
38:28He's losing more and more control.
38:31More control goes to the bureaucrats.
38:33More control goes to the executive types.
38:37He couldn't protect Eric.
38:39He couldn't protect anybody at that point.
38:41These fans love you.
38:42We want to see more of you.
38:43That was the opportunity so many people
38:45with internal broadcasting wanted and now finally had.
38:51I was out of ammunition, out of everything.
39:00It was several years before I recognized just how much freedom
39:04I had and how unique of an opportunity I had.
39:09The freedom is what led to WCW being successful.
39:13The time I spent battling internally,
39:17it took the fun out of it for me.
39:18If it wasn't for the NWO and moi,
39:22none of you people would be here tonight.
39:26If I had to reflect back on that snapshot,
39:28summer of 99 may have been one of the worst
39:32periods of my life all the way across the board.
39:35September 10, 1999, I get up like any other morning.
39:39I'm on my way to work, and I get a phone call from Harvey.
39:43And Harvey said, Eric, you need to come to my office.
39:46I got to the CNN Center, went up to Harvey's office,
39:50and he said, Eric, you need to go home.
39:53I said, Harvey, I'll get home in a little while,
39:57but I've got a pay-per-view on Sunday.
39:59The WCW Brawl Brawl of 1999.
40:04He said, I'm going to go home, and I'm going to get a pay-per-view.
40:10He said, not anymore, and that's when it dawned on me.
40:17And I'll be honest with you, it was a combination of confusion
40:23because it hadn't quite sunk in, and relief.
40:31I wasn't disappointed. I didn't fight it.
40:36I was shocked. I was shocked.
40:39How many years had Vince had?
40:43And he beat him for 83 straight weeks.
40:47I did it! I did it!
40:51Pretty, pretty impressive record.
40:54What do you say about Eric Bischoff?
40:57It's what you call taking the bull by the horns.
41:01What Eric did was impossible.
41:03In spite of the fact that everybody was against him.
41:07I don't know how he didn't blow his brains out.
41:10This has got to be the most terrible circumstances for anybody to work in.
41:15I pulled into the driveway.
41:16He walks in the door, and I asked him,
41:18What are you doing here? And I sat down at the kitchen table, and I said,
41:21I got fired.
41:23I think he was a bit rattled.
41:25He says, what are you going to do?
41:26He got in his plane, you know, threw his stuff in a bag,
41:29and flew himself to Cody, Wyoming.
41:32The next day, I was fishing right up the road from where I live right now.
41:42The fishing was awesome, by the way.
41:46It was awesome that day.
41:50I'll give Eric his props.
41:52At the end of the day, it was his idea for the NWO.
41:56He did push the Luchadores. He did push Goldberg.
42:00Eric put the pieces of that puzzle together.
42:03And, oh, it wasn't his money, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
42:08He knew what he was doing.
42:10The moves he made by getting Hogan, Savage, Nash,
42:16and the remake of Sting.
42:18There were so many good things he did.
42:20Wait a minute.
42:21I didn't get involved in his world.
42:23I didn't know the intricacies of the soap opera.
42:27Eric knew that.
42:29In those years that we were crushing it,
42:32Eric delivered exactly what I asked him to deliver.
42:36This is where the big boys play, huh?
42:39We ain't here to play.
42:41Hollywood at the hill.
42:43It's the NWO.
42:47No matter what you think about Eric later down the road,
42:50he really was one of those people who worked his butt off.
42:53He worked hard, and he stayed at it.
42:56He was great to work with.
43:01It is my honor and my privilege to introduce you to the man, Vince Russo.
43:08He's the man behind all the storylines at WWE.
43:12Now we've got him.
43:13We've got their genius.
43:15He's using Jeff Jarrett's testicles for punching bags.
43:18His thing was, let's get the audience that isn't watching wrestling.
43:22It was lots of shock and awe.
43:25It made it not advertiser friendly.
43:28Eric's boys were not in tune with what Russo wanted.
43:32And I've got plans for you, pal.
43:34Vince Russo, you're going to fucking hell just for that.
43:38I am the boss.
43:40Those guys didn't want to give up their spots.
43:42Yeah, because we earned our spot.
43:44It's just an end of an era.
43:46This is a television show.
43:48You want to go to a wrestling show, go to a house show.
43:51I think we're deviating from the script. What the hell is going on?
43:54It's going to go down as one of the most effortless moments in the history of television.
43:58That's why this company's in the damn shape it's in, because of bullshit like this.