No Contest Wrestling: Eric Bischoff

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Welcome back. To the No Contest Wrestling Podcast. It's good to see y'all. We missed y'all. I hope you missed us.

Yeah, I am the heel that you love to hate, O'Shea Jackson Jr. Hey yo. It's me. It's me. It's that T-double-O-J-I-G-G 2J.

TJ Jefferson here. I don't know how you hit that every week. That's what she said. We're starting off hot. We're starting off hot.

First and foremost, we want to say that today's the anniversary of the passing of one of the legends, one of the goats in the world of professional wrestling, Eddie Guerrero. Rest in peace. Yes. We miss you. One of the best to ever do it.

Viva la Rossa. Viva la Ross. Man, so. We've had a lot of wrestling going on. TJ went to Germany, was in terms.

Was in shout out to Munich, Germany, man, for showing us. Shout out to Munich, yeah, bro. BMW, you know, I was never a BMW guy. Just, I never thought that like BMW was for me, right? Because I'm just a simple cat, you know.

Man, O'Shea, we went over there. We got a tour of the BMW Museum. Brockman and I did a little piece with BMW. We got to see the very first motorcycle ever made, some of the first cars, prototypes, one-of-ones. We saw some of the cars coming out in the future.

It was just, it was amazing. Like the car that they had take us to and from set, you know, I posted the video on my Instagram on the. Door handle, there's something that looks like an iPod or a An iPhone, should I say? And you scroll this thing and you hit TV, and then a TV screen flips down in the back seat, literally the entire width of the back seat.

So I was watching No Contest Wrestling Podcast as I'm being driven through the streets of Munich. And I'm like, yo, man, does life get any better than this? Bro, don't sleep on BMW, bro. Black Man Whip. I'm telling you, man, BMW, they did it right.

They treated us great. They treated the show great. I'm now in the I think I'm now gonna Go searching for a BMW by That's a nice plug, bro. I'm just saying. I like what you said.

Shout out to BMW for treating us right when we were out there, G.

Now, for those watching on YouTube, I just want to give a little. You know, quick update. We have uh some new hardware in the building. Yes. You see this right here?

Shout out to the Dodgers, man. Shout out to the Dodgers for bringing it home. I messed up the bell. Big baseball fan here, folks. Yeah, I can't stand baseball, but I'm learning.

I just found, you know, I've always said baseball needs more dunks and touchdowns. And I don't know if that's ever going to happen, but listen, it's nothing like October, especially when you win.

So, you know, shout out to the Dodgers. I'm learning the game and I will continue to be annoying on Twitter. It's just funny the way that no matter what you say on Twitter, you have this ability to, without even trying to. Say the most simple Innocent thing and the enragement that comes out of these people on Twitter and that. even understand i don't understand how you get this type of heat but like we're in the pro wrestling world he's a heat magnet right i and like i i really do not be trying to piss people off but like they just gravitate towards me and you know they i i i'm minding my business all you got to do is just let me talk to myself on the internet and ignore it but like if you if you step up like i gotta smack you down i just i'm off for the confrontation i come from a long line of bs talkers so like with the smoke is what you're saying yeah i'm like dude like you you're not just gonna talk to me any type of ways you want i completely feel you on that you know so let's catch up a little bit man we caught up with what we're doing let's catch up in the world of wrestling we now this was two weeks ago back on the second a few weeks ago but we haven't had a chance to talk about Crown jewel.

Yeah. And what went down in Saudi Arabia. You know, we had the bloodline, the new bloodline, taking out Roman and the Usos, the old bloodline. Which is the right decision. That was, even though I picked the new bloodline, because you and I, we did a thing on Instagram.

Yeah. We made our picks, and I got this one wrong, but it was the right move. It was the right decision to have Solo and his crew go over. Jay. Cargo and Bianca Bel Air, they retain the women's tag teams.

Uh now. KO, Kevin Owens, and Randy Orton didn't even have a match. It was just Randy going there, kind of stomping out. Or getting stomped out, I should say, by Kevin. It's just kind of weird to see Randy Orton, of all people, in that position where he's just getting taken out.

Kevin's doing this thing right now. It's going to be interesting to see how this hill turn. Yeah. Because even though he's been a babyface for a few years, Kevin Owens is a hill, is really where the money is. Bro, Kevin Owens is so.

Treacherous. Like, he's just so, whenever he teams up with anybody, you gotta watch your back. Poor Randy, he's probably been in 11 groups. And they just never work out, right? But of course, also shout out to Adam Pierce.

He took a nasty RKO. Really? And you know, that's the other thing a lot of people might not know when you're watching WWE now and you see Adam Pierce as the GM or the figurehead. They don't know about his long career as a wrestler, former multi-time NWA world champion.

So if you watch this and you don't know, go to YouTube and just check out some old Adam Scrap Iron Pierce matches. And as well as Nick Aldous. Oh, yeah. I don't think. People quite understand that Nick Aldis should probably still be in that ring competing at a high level.

I don't know what the deal is. I hope. At one point I I I have a vision of Adam Pierce with the crew from Raw. Leading against all this with the crew from SmackDown, War Games type thing. We're not going to get this year, obviously, but maybe down the road, get those guys back in the rank.

That might be interesting to see both of them get down. Yeah, I'm telling you. Then you got LA Knight, he retained the United States Championship in the triple threat match. And then we had Liv Morgan taking out Nia Jax to win, you know. What we thought was a belt, and it turned out to be a ring, which is kind of dope in itself.

It was just like you don't hear that. We saw this multi-million dollar belt being carried around by security for weeks. No one told us until the end of the show that you don't actually get this belt, but you do get a ring.

So the ring is pretty dope. I love when Liv held it up. That belt was bigger than her, bro. That belt was massive. And I just.

Personally, I think it's hilarious that Saudi Arabia is like, no, no, no, this is staying here. That's how I know they really put some money in there. Right. That was some real deal stuff right there. And then I know we all saw that ring.

Almost took Cody's finger off, bro. Yeah. Which you know, he used to have his Ring of Honor ring. You know, so this is going to be interesting to see how kind of where this ring goes. Right.

We didn't mention, but Cody defeats Gunther. Yeah. So he's the winner in that crowd, against that crown joint. I was honestly surprised by that. I thought for sure that match was going to be, you know, interrupted, some DQ.

Matter of fact, on social media, you said the match would be. No contest. This is why you're my dog, man. But yeah, I really thought that I couldn't see. In in my book or mine.

Well Tody losing or going through losing. You know, I thought it would be something, and that's something that WWE has always been so good at: a DQ finish to kind of save both parties. But I guess you couldn't have that in this situation. Yeah, exactly.

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Learn more at AmericanExpress.com/slash Amex Business. No, that was the crown jewelry cap. And you know, we've got a great show coming up today, man. We've got a man. I can't believe we got him.

Who? Actually. May WWE look up. at him for 83 weeks. Because for 83 weeks, Eric Bischoff.

Had WCW on top of the wrestling world. And that's right. Eric Bischoff will be joining us very shortly on today's episode. That's going to be amazing. Get to chop it up with him a little bit and just kind of get into his mind and see, you know, what's going on with Eric.

Yeah, he just the amount of, I mean, we could talk to him all day. Yeah. You know, the amount of history that is in between those ears, how could you not, as a wrestling fan, just want to hear? You know, we're obviously going to be asking him our. Normal no contest questions that you we have to ask everybody that comes here because it's just juicy information.

Yeah, um, but yeah, can't wait to chop it up with Eric. It's an honor to have him, one of the great wrestling minds and a very polarizing figure. Very polarizing figure. Either you hate him or you love him, and either one doesn't matter, right? And also, guys, remember, you can always follow us on all the socials.

We're at There's No Contest on Twitter. Rent no contest wrestling podcast on Instagram, and we're on the Rich Eisen Show. YouTube network. Absolutely. Channel, network, whatever you want to call it.

Whatever you want to call it, bro. We're there, baby. We're there. And you know, NXT was yesterday, so that was interesting. You know, Julie and Stephanie Vakor, you know, my gosh, friends of us, friends of ours, they defeated Lash Legend and Jakara Jackson.

And it looks like those two might be meeting up in the Iron Survivor Challenge down the road. That's going to be a bang. Let me tell you something. That's going to be a money match, you know, and you know. Wesley defeated Said Alexander.

That was another great match. And then, you know, our guy, Trick Willie, Trick Williams came out. Yeah. He has an opportunity to, I guess. Select his number one contender, the guy he wants to face next.

He went with Andre Chase. Yeah, but Rich Holland came out, kind of was like, nah, nah, nah.

So I guess those two, Chase and Ridge, are going to fight the winner gets a match with Trick. But if Andre loses, I think. Chase Ugets. I guess what happens when your college gets shut down? You lose your money, your five.

I mean, I went to USC, bro. We got sanctioned. I think that might be what happens in Chase U.

So keep your eyes open for that. And you know, also tonight, We do have uh uh AEW Dynamite from Bridgeport, Connecticut.

So I want to give them a shout out. You're going to see Jon Moxley seizes the superstation. That's what's been touted on Twitter. I can't wait to see what's going on now with the Death Riders and how he's going to go in and just. Take over programming?

Is he going to, you know, go in there and take over the production truck? I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see. Mox is definitely, you know. Everybody knows how I felt about what happened at Wrestle Dream.

I feel like it was the right call. You made the AEW supervillain in Moxley. I'm gonna be real. Hate the name Deaf Writers. You do?

I'm like, that just sounds like. It just came out of a hat. But that is by far. The most interesting story that's running right now in AEW. You gotta tune in.

It's the Legion of Doom, bro. They like they are taking over in a real way. One thing that makes me laugh, though, about that faction is when you look, everyone's got street clothes on. Yeah. But pie.

The bastard pot comes out, and all he has on is his black trunks. He never has his shirt on, he never has pants on. Everyone else is rocking street clothes, and my man's always out there in this professional, bro. He's ready for white, he's ready for it anytime. You know what I mean?

Exactly. But then we also got FTR against the House of Black tonight on Dynamite. Dynamite, we have uh swerve against Leo Rush. I wanted to talk to you about that. Yeah, that's going to be an interesting match.

Uh, Lance Archer against Roderick Strong, Jay White and Juice Robinson, the bang bang bang. That's Hangman Page and Christian Cage. That's gonna be interesting. I'm a big Christian Cage guy, me too. Really, the AEW version of him.

I feel like he's so amazing in his bag in AEW that it's insane. Um, obviously, we all know I'm a swerve guy, so I'm really hoping Christian Cage takes this. But yeah, so that's that's some of the action going on in the wrestling world. Tonight. And uh, yeah, dude, and we got Eric Bishop.

We got Eric Bishop. Who do we think we are? Two guys just trying to bring unity to the wrestling world because the IWC, my goodness, man, you guys, yeah, you guys are not happy unless you're y'all are a beautiful island of trash. Can I tell you one thing that does bother me a lot about? Rest and fans on the internet.

Tell me. They can sit there and really trash a company. This, I hate this, I don't like this, blah, blah, blah. And then when a performer. Gets let go or leaves, and they come out and air their grievances.

All of a sudden, you're going to see fans writing.

Well, nobody liked you anyway. Nobody came to watch you, blah, blah, blah. I mean, this was a person whose life was actually affected by wrestling. Like, this was their job. And yet, you're trying to.

I guess diminish what they thought. It's just, and I know you've seen it. It's just very weird to me. Let's listen. I'd rather hear what this person has to say.

They were actually in the company. You know, their lifestyle was actually funded by this wrestling thing. And yet, people are so quick to turn on them, even though they have the same dislikes about the company. It's the competitive nature. You know, it's the competitive nature that we all take in from sports in general.

Like, personally, as a Laker fan, I don't hate Any team because of the players. I hate them because of the fan. Like, I don't talk trash because of the players on the team, because I want the best ones to be Lakers. But, like, the fans, the game within the game is what makes us go insane.

So the tribalism. And I was Quite the victim of it early on. But it was actually MJF that kind of said something that. Kind of made me look at myself and realize that I was tripping because at the end of the day, I respect everybody that goes into the square circle, I know they're putting their bodies on the line for my entertainment, and I'm thankful.

So, like, it is as soon as you hear something negative about the company that you like, you feel like you got to go to bet. You take it personal, you don't have to do that. There are things that I don't like about WWE, there are things that I don't like about AEW. I should be able to speak on those. I'm not saying, like, don't watch it, but like, no, I didn't like when uh um When Becky Lynch poured out Barbie pieces for Tiffany Stratton to fall on, I hated the beads in the CM Punk match, but I understand why they had to be there.

I understood the story that was happening. But, like, you're not just because you have some sort of. Constructive criticism. That doesn't mean that, like, you think the product should burn in hell. You just speak in your own opinion.

Like, it shouldn't be such a personal thing. And most of the accounts that go crazy and say all that nonsense about stars or the product are just faceless cowards who got a, you know, some random picture of not them.

So they feel safe, like they can go off. But if you bring that to the no contest door, I promise you. I'll knock your ass out. Let's talk LinkedIn people and small business owning. I'm a small business owner.

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Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, as promised, our guest is here, one of my favorite people in the world, taboo. As a kid, I gave you the business, man. 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. He is here with us today on the No Contest Wrestling Podcast. Eric, man, thank you for being here.

My pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for a couple of days, ever since I first got word. Oh man, that's awesome to hear, right? Yeah, man, right. Who do we think we are, dude?

But, Eric, just to touch on what I introduced you with, dude, when I was a kid. Whenever that music hit, I'm back. My God, I was in my room. Booing my ass off, dude. You are an excellent villain, dude.

And that just means you were great at your job.

So I just want to say thank you as a fan, first and foremost, before we get into these questions. Oh, I appreciate that. You know, it was hard for my kids to understand how much. Their father loved being hated. And it wasn't until they got to go to like Disneyland and, you know, nice vacations that they went, oh, okay, I get it.

He gets hated for being an ass. Is that tough though, Eric? Because obviously, you know, you're doing it to further a storyline or because that's the job. But did that ever just kind of wear on you sometimes, the fact that you would get bull booed? Because also at the same time, the NWO became very popular too.

Iconic.

So was that hard? No, it it the only time it got difficult is when They weren't booing loudly enough. Then I was like, okay, I'm doing something wrong. They don't hate me enough. Because as long as I could get the crowd to hate me and want to see me get my ass kicked.

That means we're making money and we're doing things right.

So, yeah, no, I didn't mind it at all. The more the better. Eric, you know, I personally, I like to. When we get a guest, I'd like to kind of know a little bit about you, you know, before you got to the point where we all knew who you were.

So, can you share with us a little bit what was life like for little Eric growing up? I grew up in Detroit. I was born in 55.

So the late 50s, early 60s, I was a kid. And You know. Lived in a kind of a crappy part of Detroit. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't the nicest part of town. And You know, just To me, that was, I thought everybody lived that way as a young kid.

So I didn't mind it. I didn't know anything any different. And it wasn't until I got to be, you know. teenager before started really getting a little uncomfortable living where I lived and moved to Pittsburgh with my parents when I was about 14, lived there for a couple of years, moved to Minnesota and suburban life got kind of soft and got real comfortable with it and was about as average as you could possibly be. Started working really young when I was eight, 10 years old, odd jobs, mowing lawns, shoveling sidewalks, whatever I could do and just kept working, you know.

Pretty boring life, really. I'm also from Pittsburgh and I never knew that you spent some time there. Do you remember what part of Pittsburgh you lived in? Sure, I lived in Penn Hills. Penn Hills, okay.

I know that. Penn Hills. And when I moved from Detroit, my father got a promotion or got a better job with a different company. And we went from, you know, like I said, I'm not lower end of middle class, but when we moved to Pittsburgh, it was like. Wow, we've made it.

You know, Penn Hills, holy. Pen Hills is a nice area of town. Three-bedroom house, you know, 1,200 square feet. It's a mansion. You know, it was, it was a big deal.

But I love Penn Hills. I, I, I developed some great relationships there and felt very much at home there. We really enjoyed the people in Pennsylvania. Do you feel that you connect more to Detroit or Pittsburgh? Detroit.

Detroit. It just left such a strong impression on me. You know, I still have family there and I still like to go back. And even though I don't get back to Detroit too often, when I do go back, I instantly feel at home. You know, I go back to the old neighborhood, and it looks very much the same.

Um But I just feel I feel at home there just because of the memories. Absolutely. Now, where. You know, obviously you're. One of the the Last Mohicans of the Great Wrestling Minds.

When did that love for it? Come in? What grabbed you? What was the first time you fell in love with wrestling? You know, as a kid growing up in Detroit, I watched on CKLW, which was a television station in Windsor, Canada, just across the river.

And my younger brother and I would get up on Saturday mornings. We only had one car in the family, so my mom would drive my father to work. drop him off, then she would take the car and go grocery shopping. for the week, which left my little brother and I home alone on Saturday mornings.

So, you know, we raided the refrigerator, ate all the ice cream, everything we could probably get our hands on that we weren't supposed to do. And then we'd sit and we'd watch cartoons together. And the cartoons usually ended up about 11 o'clock in the morning. And then they went into professional wrestling, big time wrestling. And my brother and I would watch wrestling.

And then when that was over, I'd, you know, he was four years younger than me.

So I'd just throw him around the house and pretend I wasn't wrestling. That's right. That's super mandatory at that point. And I always, you know, we. I always watched wrestling.

I moved to Pittsburgh. Of course, you know, no friends, new kid on the block, and all that. found out that there was rustling in Pittsburgh too. Wait a minute. You mean there's a different world heavyweight champion in Pittsburgh than there is in Detroit?

How did that happen? And I didn't know that. But I fell in love with Pittsburgh with wrestling out of Pittsburgh. And then, same kind of thing happened in Minnesota. But when it really became clear to me, that I felt differently about professional wrestling was years later.

I've been married for 40 years, but before my wife and I got married, we were checking up. And One Saturday morning, we got up, and I had to, before we did anything, I had to watch professional wrestling.

Now, mind you, I'm 27 years old at the time. My wife is kind of looking at me like, what the hell? What do you mean? We can't do anything until you watch wrestling. And I remember saying to her very distinctly: I said, Honey, you look at this as professional wrestling.

I look at this as the purest form of marketing. In the world. Wow. It's just good guys, bad guys. It's a simple message.

They're selling tickets, they're selling merchandise. It's just pure marketing. And I think it was in that moment that I realized that, yeah, it's just professional wrestling. It's guys that are underwear beating each other up with chairs. What?

There's a pretty interesting business behind this. Man, I mean, like, you're not wrong. Right. Just to have that insight on it. To to make yourself go to that point.

You know, because we're just looking at the fights and the and you know, the violence, and you're taking it the next step and going, really, how is the sausage made almost? It kind of seems like you know, I was always from the time I was a kid, I was an entrepreneur. You know, my my Mom told me a story before she passed that I ran away from home once when I was five years old. And I wanted to take the bus to my cousin's house. And I didn't have any money, obviously.

So I went around the neighborhood and I picked up pop bottle caps.

Okay, so models. And I put 'em in a bag and then I took 'em and sold them door to door.

Well, you can imagine a five-year-old kid comes up, knocks on your door with a bag full of pop-out caps. You're going to give them a quarter or 50 cents or something, right?

So I ended up coming home with like $3.50 and decided I didn't want to take the bus anyway. But I've always been kind of an entrepreneur, and I saw in professional wrestling such a great opportunity. You know, I enjoyed it for what it was. But I also saw something different in it. Eric, what what did you do with the money that you collected then since since you didn't get on the bus?

You know, I probably ended up with a, you remember those candy bars? I think they were called Zougats. They were like coconuts. And yeah, I think I probably bought a fistful of candy bars. And back then, my buddies and I would buy these little model car kits, plastic model cars.

Yeah. And we would, we'd put those together and trade them and all that kind of stuff.

So I probably blew it on stuff like that. It's funny where we're at today in society, Eric. You said you were five going around door to door by yourself. I can remember being a kid. I'm in first grade.

I'm a latchkey kid.

So parents, sisters already gone in the morning. I have to. Make my own breakfast. I have to make sure the door's locked, walk myself to the school bus, get home, let myself in, go pick my sisters up from the church a few blocks down the street. Yesterday, I read a story on Yahoo that a woman got arrested because her 10-year-old son was walking down the street in their hometown by themselves.

And I'm like, Wow, then all of our parents would be under the jail if that was the case.

So it's just very weird how times have changed now. And kids back then, we were able to, you know, go pick up pot bottles. Bro, don't look at me. I'm born in 1991, bro. This is the youngest.

My parents didn't let me do nothing. You know, it's sad when you think about it because, again, you know. Where I grew up, you know, most people think of Detroit as being a little bit of a risky environment, but when I lived there, You know, in the summertimes, I'd leave the house at eight o'clock in the morning on my bike and I'd come home sometime just before dark. Yeah. And my parents.

Half the time didn't know where I was, nor were they concerned because you know it was rough around the edges where I grew up, but it wasn't really unsafe. And you know, I can't imagine if I had a five or six-year-old kid and I lost sight of him for five minutes now, I'd start to panic. But it was just a different time back then. Eric, were you on one of the miles in Detroit, six mile, seven mile, eight mile? Were you on one of those roads?

10 mile and grass shit. Wow, okay. Hey man, that's news to me.

Well, you know, Eminem was eight. Yeah, so Aaron was a couple miles away from where Marshall was doing his. Yeah, and did you know that Eminem and I went to the same elementary school? Actually, we went, you know, obviously different times. No, I see you're learning something new every day about Eric.

I thought that we knew a lot, and now here we go. Didn't know about Pittsburgh, didn't know him and Marshall McCarthy. But you can only find that on the No Contest recipe. That's true, Eric. And I appreciate if you don't ever tell anyone else that for at least a few months, you can always have them come back to this.

So, Eric, when did you. Get involved in the world of wrestling. After you just said that you kind of watched it, you kind of had the idea this is a great way to market. When did you actually step foot into the world?

Well, fast forward, I went from selling pop-out caps door to door to creating a Game for kids. I had a good friend of mine who's Japanese, same age as me, and he grew up in Tokyo. I grew up in Detroit. One night we were sitting in a bar. Imagine that, having a good time.

And, you know, I was explaining to him some of the things that we did as kids to entertain ourselves. You know, we would play army and have rock fights. And, you know, it sounds horrible, but they were clumps of dirt. They weren't heavy rocks.

So, you know. Occasionally you'd get a stitch or two, but it wasn't anything serious. And my friend Sonny said when he was a kid. Him and his buddies would go around and they would find milk bottle caps. Interesting, caps have something in common here.

But they would find these caps from milk bottles and then they would play tag with them. They'd throw them at each other like ninja shuriken stars, right? Those five-pointed stars, they swing them at each other. Yeah. And by the end of the night, you know, we had a pile of napkins scattered all over the place and, you know, eight or ten bottles of beer laying around.

And we had created this game where you buy the game and it comes in a box. There's two felt vests.

So you put the vest over your head. There was a Ninja Warrior silk screen on the front. And this is back in the 80s when Karate Kid was kind of a thing. And then you had a headband that looked like the Karate Kid headband, but it had a piece of plastic to protect your eyes. And you'd get three red stars and three white stars.

Well, the stars were about that big around, and they were Velcro. And they were padded, and there was a little like a washer inside.

So there's enough weight you could throw it across the room, but not knock out anybody's teeth.

So you put this thing on, you just taste each other around and trying to. Try to hit each other with your stars. Yeah. So we got all excited about it. You said we were going to make our millions, you know, manufacturing and selling this game.

So we ordered like 5,000 of these games. Because if you ordered 500, they cost like $300 a piece. But if you ordered 5,000, you could get them for like 12 bucks.

So we beg borrowed stole bounced checks, whatever we needed to do. to get these 5,000 games manufactured over in Korea. He sent the games to us. We're finally ready to go. And it was like.

Well, how do we sell them?

now we got them how do we sell them we hadn't figured that out yet So I started going to shopping malls and I'd talk to the store manager and I'd bring like 30 or 40 games with me, stack them up outside the door. And my wife and I would be playing this game with each other, kind of demonstrating it. People would come in and buy games. And that was kind of fun for about 20 minutes. And we realized, you know, if we're going to sell these games, we've got to come up with a different idea.

Yeah. Now, this is back probably before you all the time, but Suzanne Summers had this thing called the Thigh Master. Thigh Master, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Made a big impression on me. I think a lot of us. She's selling these thigh masters on this thing that was called an infomercial. Yeah. I had never heard of an infomercial before, but I thought, well, hell, I could do that.

I didn't know how to do it, but I figured I could figure it out.

So I went to a guy by the name of Vern Gagne.

Now, Vern was a wrestling promoter in Minnesota. He had a show that was on ESPN Monday through Friday at 3 in the afternoon Central Time. And he was also a big supporter of amateur wrestling. And I wrestled in high school and Afterwards, I wrestled Greco and Freestyle Wrestling and AAU, Amateur Athletic Union, and all that. And Vernon was a really big amateur wrestling supporter.

So I thought, wait a minute. He's got a wrestling show that's on Monday through Friday in the afternoon. Kids are watching that. I've got a game that I want kids to buy. Suzanne Summers got this Thigh Master gimmick going on.

What if I produce a commercial? And talk Vern into airing the commercial during his show, and then we'd sell the game and split the profit 50-50.

So I thought, all right, I'm going to call Vergana because, you know, he supports amateur wrestling, and I'm just going to play my amateur wrestling card and see if I can get a meeting. And I did. And I did. And We did the deal. Vern agreed to let me run my commercials and we split the profit.

But About a week or two after that first meeting with Vern, I got a call and he offered me a job. To come and work for his wrestling company in sales and syndication. I didn't know what syndication was. That was before Google.

So I had to ask around. And I figured out what it was, and it's just sales. And I don't care if you're selling cars, you're selling computers or selling real estate. Sales is sales, it really is bottle caps, yeah. Yeah, or bottle caps.

No kidding, right?

So I took the job, not knowing anything about it, but I was so excited, not so much to be in the wrestling business. I'd never really considered ever having a career in a wrestling business, but I was really excited to get into television. Yeah. Because as a kid growing up in Detroit, you know, in the 50s and 60s, television wasn't new, but it wasn't really very popular in my neighborhood either. Like, just about everybody had a black and white TV.

But I remember the first person on my block to get a color television. I mean, the entire neighborhood came over to see it. It was a big deal, right? But I grew up with television, being influenced by television, but I had no idea how it was produced. Like, how do they get the videos and the sounds into this little box in my living room?

I need to know that.

So that gave me the opportunity to get in and work for a small company and just have an opportunity to see at the very basic level how television was produced.

Well Eric, can I just a callback real quick? You said You created that game with your friend Sonny. Is this Sonny Onu? Yeah. Okay.

So that so you guys really do go back.

Sonny and I met. I trained in martial arts for quite a while. Ended up getting my black belt in 79. And that's how I met Sonny. I met Sonny, I think, probably in 77 when I was trading.

I think when I was about a brown belt. And Sonny was a very active competitor in martial arts. We were very highly ranked in the U.S. at the time. And we just became friends.

We traveled around the country fighting in tournaments together and To this day, or so. I just heard from him this morning. We're still close friends. That's dope.

Sonny Odo. Yeah, dude.

So, I mean, like, you've had. Obviously, you've had this mind, you know, just your entrepreneur mind. Uh from a very young age, even how you got into wrestling.

So, I mean, There has to be an itch, you know, when you're sitting at home now when you watch the business. What are some things that like... You look at like that, you wish you could have a hand in, or what are some things that you feel are missing in today's wrestling?

Well, it depends, you know, what I'm watching. You know, when I watch WWE, I kind of wish I was a fly on the wall just to observe the creative process because I think they're doing some amazing things. From a storytelling point of view and a television production point of view, they're doing just some amazing, amazing things over there. And of course, I would like to be a part if it was practical. If I didn't have to move to freaking Connecticut to do it, I tried that once, it didn't work so well.

But I miss the creative, the collaborative part of creative. I really miss because you get in a room full of three, four, five, six people. And if the chemistry's good. That's a big if, but if the chemistry's good. Man, that collaborative creative process is about as much of a buzz.

is Is I can enjoy. I mean, I really, really miss that. But when I watch other Programs, you know, if I'm watching AEW, I kind of just bang my head on the table because they're missing so many. Obvious opportunities when it comes to storytelling and continuity and things like that. But you know, when I watch wrestling now, it's more to kind of see where the business is going.

I don't watch for entertainment as much as I watch to kind of monitor the business of the wrestling business, so to speak. Makes yeah that no I mean we Just in our conversation right now, you know, you've Always looked at it as like your mind. is you know the gears are turning.

So I I can imagine it is a It is a ma. Unscratchable itch like you will forever have. You know what the frustrating part is, though? The frustrating part is. When I was in the business, you know, when I was active as president of WCW and involved in creative, I was learning on the job.

I didn't really have any previous experience.

So, you know, you kind of learn as you go, right? And you make mistakes, and then you have some successes, and you try to have more success than mistakes, obviously. But I've learned so much since I've been in the business.

Okay.

And it's like, man, if I only knew then what I know now, kind of thing. And there's a part of me that still wants to jump in. And I'm going to have that opportunity on December 5th with MLW. We're going to do a one-shot deal where I come in to work with their creative team and try to leave my fingerprints on their product. And that's going to be fun.

It's already been fun because we've started the creative process already. And I'm really enjoying it. I'm looking forward to that night. That's amazing.

So, Eric, can I go back? Let's go back to Vern. Let's go back to AWA. You're working in sales. How did that transition into you getting in front of the camera?

Yeah, that's a funny story.

So. My now wife, my then girlfriend. She was a model. And so was I. That's how we met.

Minneapolis was kind of a hotbed for print modeling because Target was there, and Dayton's was there. And there was a lot of big box retail there that were based in Minneapolis.

So there was a lot of work for print models. And that's what I did. I did some commercial work, but Mark, were you one of those JCPenney catalog models? Because you had that look back in the day. No, in fact, I wish I had it.

You know, we could put it up on screen. But one of the first jobs my wife and I did together before right after we first met was for Target.

So I'm wearing a little submarine type tank top and a pair of shorts that were way too freaking short, but it was the 80s. And they were paying me 75 bucks an hour, so I would have worn anything, right? It didn't matter to me. But um Yeah, I did some print modeling, did a little bit of commercial work.

So we fast forward, I'm in sales and syndication. I had nothing to do with the creative side of the business. I had nothing to do with the television production side of the business. Vern was very old school. You're familiar with the term K-Fabe.

You know, it's like only the people that needed to know what was going on were allowed to know. And I wasn't one of them.

So it was all still a big mystery to me, even though I worked there. I mean, it wasn't a mystery, but I didn't get to witness things firsthand.

So one I'm in my office and I always had a sport coat and a tie just in case I got called to a meeting that I didn't expect. I could, you know. Get presentable. With little effort. And I was sitting in my office one day, and I don't care if it was Greg Ghani or somebody else came to my room, knocked in my office door, said, Hey, Eric.

Have you got a tie? Yes, in my drawer. He said, You got a sport coat? I see it's hanging on the back of the door. Why?

He goes, Put it on and follow me.

So they took me, Greg, I think it was Greg Gagne, took me back to the production studio, which was off limits to me. I was never allowed back there, right? Yeah. And Found out that Larry Nelson, who was the announcer there, conducted all the interviews. Yeah.

Yeah. Larry liked to drink. A lot. And ended up getting a DUI. the night before And he was in jail.

And Vern needed an announcer. He needs somebody to hold the microphone and conduct interviews. And he knew that I used to model and stand in front of a camera.

So I guess that qualified me. And he brought me in and said, okay, here's what you're going to do today. And literally, On the job, taught me how to conduct interviews with wrestlers, and I sucked so bad. It was a horrible experience. But I figured, okay, it's one day I did it.

And then they hired somebody else to come in and take that job. And he's actually sucked worse than me.

So they brought me back in to do it the following time. They kept hiring people to replace me, but they never worked out.

So eventually, I think it's kind of like you know how when you get noseblind to something, like you're cooking something in your house and it smells really good. And then after a couple of hours, you don't smell it anymore because you just get used to it. I think that was the way Vern felt about my abilities. It's not that he thought I was any good. He just got so used to how bad I was, it didn't bother him anymore.

And I ended up keeping the job. Oh, hosting a show for ESPN once I've kind of half-ass figured it out. And Eric, I'll be honest with you, that was the first time. I was introduced to Eric Bischoff coming home from school, I think junior high. Maybe even elementary school turning on the SPN and I You know, it didn't dawn on me until years later once you had, we were in WCW.

But yeah, I used to watch you. On the SPN. And I'm from a town called Altoona, Pennsylvania, which is two hours from Pittsburgh.

So, you know, we. AWA wouldn't come on all the time. It was weird, but like I definitely remember watching you. Um you know, weekday afternoons. I think it came on, it was after school, so I'd say between like three, four, five and that hour is is where it was on, yeah.

Yeah, you probably saw my ninja Star Wars commercials too. And I'm sure I remember that. I'm sure. Man, it'd be great to have a piece of that game. Right?

And by the way, if you want to text us or DM us the picture of you and your wife, I would love to see that Target. Yeah, I'll do that. He loves Target, Aaron. He just, that's what it is. He's a real eye full of these shorts that we're wearing, you're going to just bulk right to the nearest Target store.

All right, so how did your time with Or how long did your time with Vern in the AWA last? I started there in 87. By 91, Vern was slowly going out of business. It wasn't even that slowly. He was burning through cash.

He had remortgaged his property a couple different times. Really struggling to try to hold on to the business. I went I don't know. Four or five months. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less without a paycheck.

And I, you know, I had two young kids at home. My son was like. Two or three. My daughter was two. And you know, they were repossessing cars out of my driveway and turning off the heat to my house.

And in Minnesota, in January, that gets a little tough. Kids are eating, you know, beans and rice and crappy food. And I just, I couldn't do it any longer.

So I applied for a job for WWE. They had an ad in a paper. They were looking for announcers. And by this time, I had been on. television on ESPN for a couple of years.

So, I thought maybe I got a shot. I applied for that job and didn't get it because. I should Shouldn't have gotten it. I wasn't that good. And Went back working for Vern for no money.

and then found out that WCW was also looking for announcers.

So I sent a videotape to them and within a matter of days, got a phone call. A week after that, I'm on a plane flying down to Atlanta for an audition and ended up getting a job at WCW. Mm-mm. Walk us through the time where you really got into the creative process for that. You know, that really wasn't until 1995.

You know, I went to work for WCW, I think, in 91. Yeah. Um I was a backup announcer. I was like. I was a C-squad announcer.

I did all the work that the other announcers didn't have time, honestly, to do. And I was thrilled to death with that job because I could pay my bills and, you know, heat my house and buy my kids a steak every once in a while.

So I was perfectly content. I had no aspirations to move up into management. I was just so grateful for what I had. I just wanted to be as good as I could be doing what I. was hired to do, I didn't really think about getting into management.

Um It wasn't until I was made a vice president, then a senior vice president, and then in about 1995. I was in a meeting with Ted Turner.

Okay.

And Ted asked me a question that I didn't expect and I wasn't prepared for. He said, Eric, uh. What's it going to take for WCW to be competitive with WWE? I'd never thought about that. Question never.

crossed my mind. I was focused on trying to make $1 a profit because WCW had never been profitable from the time Ted bought it, created it until that day in 1995. WCW was losing money for Turner Broadcasting. And my job at the time in 95 as executive vice president, I think it was, or Senior advice, but whatever it was. My job was just to try to make $1 a profit.

That's all I cared about.

So when Ted asked me that question, it was like, oh, God. Let's see. I can't bullshit a bulldog. I'm on order. I'm a pretty good salesman, but I knew I was up against Ted Turner and I wasn't going to try that with him.

It was the first time I ever had a one-on-one meeting with him, and I didn't want to blow it.

So I just told him the truth. I said, Ted, Vince is on. WWE is on primetime on Monday nights. Our show is on Saturday nights, 6.05 Eastern, 305 Pacific. We can't be competitive.

That way. And without missing a beat. Ted looked over at a guy by the name of Scott Sassa, who at the time was the heir apparent to Ted Turner. He looked over at Scott and said, Scott, give Eric two hours every Monday night to go head-to-head with WWE. Damn.

That's what I said. In my head, though, I said it. I didn't want to say it out loud, but I'm thinking, what the? Did I just do tomorrow? My God, Tommy, why did you say that?

You could have just made up anything else. And. I walked out of that room knowing that, okay, up until that point, I didn't want to get near creative. I didn't have any confidence in myself. I didn't have any experience.

I didn't have any reason to have any confidence. I had never been involved in the creative process of wrestling. And I knew that this opportunity was either going to make me or break me.

So I kind of forced myself. Starting in about 1995, I created the Nitro format. From scratch. That was my first foray. And I surrounded myself with good people.

So I didn't get myself in too much trouble. But that was when I first started and really didn't get. Too involved in creative until about 96. And then it was. Pedal to the metal.

Yeah, there's nothing like Instantly getting more important at work than what you signed up for. Right? Oh, I was, you know, talk about imposter syndrome. I mean, I had never heard of imposter syndrome at that point, but I could have written the book. I'd go to work every day going, why am I in this position?

What? What do I do? How do I do this job? But again, I surrounded myself with really good people that I could lean on, that had more experience than I did in certain areas. and was able to learn from them and And just, like I said, learn on the job.

You know, had some great success, had a couple of miserable failures, but as long as you learn from your mistakes, it's just part of the process. And and now During that time of you, you know. running the ship. What was What was one of the biggest moments that we know as fans. But was the hardest for you to pull off.

Like there were things behind the scenes made it difficult, but the moment happened. I mean, it would have to be the night that Hulk Hogan turned heel. In A Bash of the Beach in 96. I mean, there were so many things that made that complicated. Not the least of which was, I wasn't 100% convinced that Hulk was actually going to follow through.

Hear that. I got to know Hulk pretty well by that point in time. And there's a lot of great things about Hulk Hogan, but. There's some aspects to his personality that were challenging for me. One of which is that he would change his mind.

Six times throughout a day. I mean, he would second-guess himself all the time. And it was.

Somewhat easy to influence him, depending on who you were. Yeah. I knew that Hulk was excited about doing it, but it was also a giant risk for him. There were, you know, we were paying them a couple million dollars a year at WCW, which was a lot of money and still is a lot of money. But Hulk was making a lot more money outside of wrestling.

He was still getting movie roles. You know, they're cheesy B movies, straight to video movies and such, but he was still making great money. He was getting endorsements. He still had a lot of business. And he was concerned that once he turned heel, a lot of that business would dry up.

And by the way, he had an agent by the name of Peter Young. And Peter Young was one of those guys that. He's afraid of everything. He's one of those sky is falling type of personalities. And Peter was absolutely convinced that if Hulk Hogan turned heel, then, of course, Peter's cash cow, his client, all those opportunities were going to dry up and it was going to cost Peter money.

And I knew that Peter was one of those guys that was in Hulk's ear. Hulk's wife at the time was in his ear, and she was nuts. And You know, didn't want to disrupt the cash flow and things like that.

So, there was enough influence around Hulk at the time that I was fairly concerned that at the last minute he would change his mind.

So much so that I had to have a plan B. In case that day arrived and everybody thought Hulk Hogan was going to show up and turn him, of course, there weren't that many people that knew. That was another thing that made it challenging. I knew, Hulk knew, By that time, the day of the event, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash knew. That's about it.

We kept that a secret. And it's one of the reasons why it worked as well as it worked, because it surprised everybody. But Not being sure if Hulk is going to show up for that moment. was pretty stressful. But we got through it.

That's so hard to do now. Who was the backup? Was it Sting? I hear that Sting was the backup. It was him, yeah.

Here's the funny part. No, it's just funny. I was just flipping through my social media and I saw uh Hulk on uh Logan Paul's show, right? And I'm just like 20 minutes ago before I got on here. I'm flipping through and I see Hulk explaining this story.

And of course, he's got a much different perspective on it than I did. Standard, he made it sound like it was his idea to turn heel. Let me tell you a quick story. Please, okay, wait a minute. We got no contest inclusive.

This is it's only funny to me because I just saw this clip. But About eight months before Hulk Hogan turned heel, I went down to Florida. During the middle of the week, because I wanted to talk to Hulk about the possibility of him turning heel because the red and yellow thing wasn't working as well as it used to by that time. Yeah, he wasn't getting the reactions that he was used to. We were all seeing it.

Nobody wanted to say anything, but it was like kind of not working.

So I thought, well, I'm just going to go down and put my salesman hat on, you know, pretend I'm selling pop-out caps door to door. And I'm going to try to convince Hulk Hogan into turning heel.

So I get down to his house and. Pull up big mansion on the ocean, go into his house. It's like two o'clock in the afternoon, go into his office, hands me a beer, making small talk. Finally, I get into the reason why I'm there. And I start talking to him about.

At least discussing the idea of turning heel.

Okay.

And he's stroking his Fu Manchu, nodding his head. That's when you know it's not working. When he starts doing this, it's like. It's over. But he stroked his pumento and he looked at his watch and he says, Well Eric, I appreciate you coming down, but the kids are getting out of school and I have to go pick them up.

So you can take that beer with you. Wow. I said, whoa, that's a nice intimate. Nobody's ever thrown me out of a house or a bar and handed me a beer to take with me, right? Right.

So I thought. That was actually a nice gesture.

Well, it was as nice as it could be under the circumstances.

So at that point in time, I'm like, okay, well, that's never going to work. I'm never going to go to that well again.

So now Hulk Hogan's off doing a movie called Santa with Muscles, a classic Christmas movie. Every year you watch it together with your family. Of course. But he's locked down. He's on a set north of LA, somewhere in the mountains.

And this is like May. I think it was in May.

So he said, Eric, I can't leave. And Hulk wasn't scheduled to do anything with us until October.

So he was basically off, right? But he said, Look, I can't leave the set. Can you come out? I want to talk to you about where we're going in the future. I said, sure.

So I jumped on a plane, flew to LA. By the time I got to his trailer, it was like midnight. It was up in the middle of nowhere. I walk into his trailer, and of course, he's sitting there. He's got a case of beer on ice, and I could barely see him because there's so much smoke in the room.

He had a box of Cuban cigars he was buffing away on. We sit down. Make small talk again. He leans forward.

So Who's the third man?

Now, if you remember, Scott Hall shows up and walks through the crowd one week. What a moment, too, by the way, Eric. I know. That was cool, right? Passed over that little pro.

That moment was on, and I don't want to interrupt you, but man, as a wrestling fan, that moment, you're just like, what? is happening right now. It it it was It was cool as hell. But when Scott came down, he confronted me and he said, Well, next year, my big buddy's going to be here.

So, okay, who's that going to be? Right? Following week, Kevin Nash shows up.

Now they lay out the challenge. And so we've got a third guy. You WCW guys, go get three guys, and we'll see you at. whatever the pay-per-view was. And it was in June.

So Now it's a mystery. The whole mystery in the story was: who's the third man? With Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. I go to Sting. It took me about a week to convince Sting.

to be the bad guy, right? To be the heel and turn. That one, that was hard too, because he was really not comfortable with it. But I finally got him on board. And he's ready to go.

So then I get this call from Hulk. I'm sitting in his trailer, he's stroking his Fu Manchu, and he says, So, who's the third man?

Well, I didn't want to tell him, not because I didn't trust him. For sale. Yeah. Hulk is like a child sometimes. When he gets really excited, he cannot keep a secret.

It's not that he wants to spill the beans, but sometimes he gets so excited he forgets that he's sharing things that he probably shouldn't share. Understand.

So I didn't want to answer the question.

So I said, well. Gee, Hulk, who do you think it should be? You know, answer a question with a question. Yeah. By time.

I should have done that with that turner. But finally, I said, Hulk, I don't know. Who do you think it should be? And he went, Curls his lips up like that. Looks like a big fish.

Mm-hmm. You're looking at him, brother.

Okay.

Oh Wow. And I got all because I knew that was big.

So I had a couple of beers, smoked a cigar, started heading back to my hotel, and I'm about halfway back to LA. And I'm going, oh shit.

Now, I got to go back and tell Sting after I spent a week convincing him to be the heel, and now he's finally excited about it. I get to tell him, never mind, we're not going to do that. But Yeah, Sing was, but I convinced Sing because I was just honest with Steve. Steve Borden, Sing's name. We had become pretty good friends.

And I just said, look, I'm not sure he's going to go through with this. He, he, possibly will, hopefully he will, but he might not.

So, you need to be ready to be the third guy if, for whatever reason. he shows up and has a change of heart. Why do you think Hulk changed his mind? What do you think happened that? made him kind of sign off on it.

He saw the story. Yeah. He saw the energy. You know, when Scott Hall, the same reason, you know, when you were a kid, you react to seeing Scott Hall coming down, and it's kind of like, what the hell is this? I've never seen anything like this before.

And then Kevin Nash shows up the following week. And I think Hulk was watching because Jimmy Hart was sending him tapes every week so Hulk could keep up with what we were doing. I think Hulk saw the way that story was developing and saw it as a great opportunity. Man, what a I mean just what a moment. Yeah, dude, why I was introduced to wrestling by my older brother Daryl through video games.

Okay.

And on Second Genesis, there was. Uh WWF Raw. And so that's where I learned. A lot of wrestlers was through video games. I didn't start like watching on a weekly basis until the late 90s.

And the conversation I had with my brother of, I thought you told me His name was Razor Ramot. What are they doing over here? I thought you said this was diesel. What are they doing over here? WCW blew my mind that, like, oh, these are.

These are competing companies. People can move. People can go to other places. I grew up. Feeling that Hulk Hogan was a WCW guy until somebody showed me the Andre moment and things like that.

It was, it was. They In my mind. I saw the black and white before I saw red and yellow. That's amazing.

Yeah. You know, it's such a generational thing, isn't it? I mean, wrestling has left. Such a big impression on fans, of course, such a big impression on people. But depending on how old they are, and in some cases, where they grew up.

It's different for everybody. You know, when people say, oh man, I remember back in the good old days.

Well, to some people, the good old days was like 1992. To some people, the good old days was 1978 in wrestling. It's kind of like music. It leaves an impression on you at a certain age, and that impression sticks with you no matter how old you get. Erica.

And now we're Something that I happened to do this morning, and I just want to talk to you about this. You know, I spend a lot of my time, probably way too much of my time, watching old wrestling matches.

So, this morning, in preparation for you, you know, I decided, let me just throw on a couple episodes and you know, old. Nitro, just to refresh my memory. And it just so happened by chance. Luckily, I'm so glad it happened this way. I settled on season two, episode 29 from July 29th, 1996.

I don't know if you remember what happened on this day, but I'm sure you will after I tell you what happened. What led up to this? We got a six-man tag match in the ring, right? Three-fourths of the four horsemen. Benoit, Flair and McMichael taking on Luger, Sting, and Savage.

In the middle of the match, here comes Jimmy Hart from the back. He's yelling, he's grabbing cameramen. He's like, I need help. I need help. The outsiders are back there.

He's pleading. Luger finally understands what he's saying. They run to the back. And then the scene that unfolded was one of the greatest scenes ever in the history of wrestling. The first thing we see is Arn Anderson laid out.

Then we have the American males, Buff Bagwell, Scotty Riggs. They just gotten beat down with a baseball bat. Riggs actually got hit by Hall with a stage light, I think it was. And then Rey Mysterio steps out of the trailer. And he jumps on Kevin Nash and Nash catches him.

And he, the moment that I think everyone has seen, he just throws him off the trailer like a lawn dart. And then, you know, the NWO laugh, they get into the limo, they speed off. Randy Savage comes out, he jumps on the roof of the limo, the limo takes off, Savage is gone, and then total chaos ensues, Eric. And it was so chaotic and amazing because you're sitting there like, What is going on? You know, you've got all the guys laid out, you've got Sting asking Eddie Guerrero what Ray Mysterio is saying because Ray's speaking in Spanish.

And he's like, There's three guys. No, there's four guys. And you know, and the late, great woman, she's so amazing. She's cradling Arn Anderson's head and she's screaming for help. And please help Arn.

And, you know, Miss Elizabeth is there trying to comfort her. And Steve Mongo McMichael is just screaming in the background about justice and the outsiders that can't get away with this. Can you just tell us, like, what do you remember putting that all together and how much? you know, did you have to do with that? A lot.

It was because it was amazing, Eric. I was this morning, I was like, oh, I'm so happy this is the episode that came on. Yeah, what was really Yeah. What I'm proud of about that scene, number one, it was live.

So there was no editing involved. There was no safety net. There was no rehearsal. We blocked it. I mean, we had to block it because the cameras needed to know where they needed to be and have a general idea of what was going to happen.

But in a scene like that, You know, in the wrestling business, we used to call it a Schmaz, which is just that was the word, yeah. People beat the hell out of each other backstage. It's not like a match where there's a sequence of moves and things. It's just. It's just like a gang fight, basically.

And so we blocked it, but we didn't rehearse it. 80% of what you saw or more was all improv. Like the thing with Ray. Yeah, that just happened. No.

Yeah. So much of the work. That's a human being.

So, you know, aren't we? We are laid out the minute the cameras got back there because Arn had some nerve damage in his neck. We couldn't afford to bounce him around at all. Risk of getting him hurt. But just about everything else you saw was just kind of improvised.

And what was really cool about it. Was we shot that at the Disney MGM studios in Orlando because that was during the Olympics. And every production crew, every freelancer. That from sports that we could possibly try to find was already booked for the Olympics. Mm.

So we were forced to go to Disney MJM Studios and shoot that show because they had their own in-house production team, and I didn't have to hire freelancers.

So we shot that at the Disney MGM Studios. We did it outside.

Okay.

So What was really interesting is while this schmaz is going on. I'm in the back and I'm hearing sirens. I'm thinking, wow, it must be a. Fire or something, you know, on at this soundstage. I didn't know what it was.

I go in the backstage area, and all of a sudden, cop car.

Now, we had a couple. Prop cop cars there. We wanted one or two there. But now there's like eight of them. And these are legit cops.

These aren't our... Toy cops. These are real cops. And they're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. What happened was there were people that were watching that show live that were right around.

Disney? The location we're shooting, they saw that and called the police. They called 911. Because they thought there was a murder going on at the sound stage. I had to, we were explaining to the cops.

No, no, see these cameras? This is all make-believe. This isn't real, you know. But it was such a believable scene that people called the cops on us. It was crazy.

Yeah, I know at one point I hear the siren, a fire truck pulls up, not an ambulance, and then Jimmy Hart just goes running through the crowd of people like he was trying to give a message.

Now it makes sense. Maybe he was running over to tell somebody, but it looked just really weird the way Jimmy ran through. And then, you know, Alex Wright gets in the ambulance with Ray, who's not speaking English and leaves Eddie. And I thought, well, that's weird because how's he going to, you know, but Eric, it was, it was, it was truly just one of those moments that you're like, what is going on? And then I remember, well, I remember, I watch it.

The crowd starts to chant boring, but not because they were, it was boring. They didn't know what was going on in the back because you didn't have monitors out there, right? Yeah, we didn't have monitors.

So they, of course, felt like they were getting shortchanged because they didn't know there was a massacre going on backstage. I remember Tony Schiavone saying, well, they're chanting boring, but if they knew what was happening, they probably wouldn't. Yeah. That was one of the more Definitive moments, I think, in Nitro during that period of time. We did a couple things, not to that scale, but we did a couple things that were so believable and felt so real.

Oh, yeah. That people just weren't convinced one way or the other whether this was fake. Is this really WWE really trying to invade? Or they just weren't sure. And that's, you know, what I tell people today when they say, oh, what's missing in wrestling?

I think part of what's missing. is what I always used to refer to as the sweet spot. You know, it's like even as a teenager, I knew what I was watching wasn't real. Boom. It was just too choreographed, even for a 13-year-old.

I just knew it. I didn't know how, but I just knew. But then every once in a while, there'd be a match, or there'd be two wrestlers that were so intense in their. Everything that they did, that I would be like, okay, I know the rest of those matches might be, you know, make-believe, but these two guys, they really, yeah, that's the feeling. I think every wrestling fan has had that moment.

Yeah, well, and that's, and that's the sweet spot, that's the target. You know, you want to try to get fans to a point where. Yeah, they know it's wrestling, but they think this wrestling's real. Yeah. And we were successful with that formula a lot with Nitro throughout 96, 97, even 1998.

We did a lot of that, and it's what took us to the top. I mean, knowing how you started, and you know, just as an announcer, a C-team announcer, as you said, and to where you got with the 83 weeks. We had Mark Henry on the show, and we asked him what it feels like when he won the world title and he got to lay his head on the pillow. As world champion, what was going through his mind? What's going through your mind?

When you are On top of the mountain. Yeah, see, like 25 weeks in. Yeah, like, what's that feeling of, like, damn? I'm really doing it. Yeah, it's all working.

I never took the time to think of it that way. I never had the time to put my head on a pillow because as soon as that show's over, I've got to start working on the next one. Yeah. It's a little like being on a creative treadmill. You don't have time to step off and catch your breath and go, wow, I'm really getting good at this.

You just got to keep going, keep the pace up because the audience wants you to go faster. They want more. They don't want less. They don't want less than last week. They want more than last week.

So I never took the time to really think about it much. Man, couldn't even smell the rose out there. I got a question for you, Eric. Another one of the great moments, and it could have been even greater. Why didn't you open up the door when DX showed up?

Because it could have been the greatest moment, not in wrestling history, but the greatest moment in the history of the planet Earth had those elephant doors. Rose up and say, I don't know, Hock Ming is standing there with Big Show. I mean, Can you take us back to that and what was going on?

Well, first of all, let me just tell you what would have happened had I opened that door. I'd have walked backstage expecting to see bodies and teeth flying all over the place. Bodies and teeth. I would have probably seen six or eight guys huddled up in a corner, sharing a 12-pack of beer and rolling a joint. These guys were all friends.

Yeah, right. They weren't going to beat the hell out of each other because of their company loyalty. That's number one. Number two, though, I was in the middle of the ring.

Now, people, I got into a really heated debate with my podcast host, Conrad Thompson, over this once when we first started doing shows together. That happened during basketball playoffs. My show typically, Nitro started at 8 o'clock Eastern, but because of the NBA, we got moved and we started like at 6.

So it was still light out. Right? So I'm in the ring. Doing, you know, I was live. It wasn't tape, it was live, and I've got an IFB in my ear, and I'm.

Running my mouth, talking about whatever I was talking about. And my assistant is in the truck, in the production truck. She's just, Eric, Eric, Eric, you know, WWE is here, WWE is here. What should we do? And of course, I couldn't just stop what I was doing.

It was on live television.

So, Doug Dillinger, our head of security, he handled it the best way he could. Figure out how to handle it. And he just shut the doors and prevented anything from escalating. Yeah. Had I known.

If I would have had Sixty seconds advance notice before I got into the ring. I don't know Definitely would have opened up the doors. It would have been interesting because those guys weren't going to do anything. You want to improv, let's improv, man. I would hope, Eric, that they were friends, but I would also hope that they were professional enough that They would have thrown down.

What was expected? You know, not necessarily really killing each other, but I would hope that. Look, we know what we got to do. We're doing it with violence, bro. It would have been awesome.

And they may, you know, all the time I've spent, you know, man, I'm friends with Paul Levesque now. I worked in WWE for years. Bruce Pritchard's one of my closest friends, and he was like the mastermind behind that thing. And You know, I never asked them, hey, what would you guys have done if we'd opened the doors? Because it would have been awkward.

They wouldn't have known what to do. It's like, should we shake hands with everybody or should we fake fight? Or what should we do? But it would have been great. You know, the two things I wish would have happened.

One is, I wish I would have let them in the door. I wish I would have known in advance so I could let them in. And I wish that Vince McMahon would have showed up when I challenged him to fight. Those are the two things that didn't happen that I wish would have happened. Uh would you say I mean, besides those, is there a story that you couldn't get off, that you want, that you wish you could have?

So Oh, gosh. It's always good when they laugh. You see, the wheels turning in Eric's head right now. Uh So I was a private pilot. I haven't flown a plane in a couple of years now, but there was a time when I was very active.

I had my own plane. Yeah. And I spent a lot of time flying across. I love to fly. I was instrument-rated and I was certified to fly high-performance, complex aircraft, which was my official rating.

So I just love flying. Yeah. And I remember one time I was, this was in the summer, and for whatever reason, I was flying around down in Arizona. And I thought. Wouldn't it be cool?

Because people knew that I flew, right? It wasn't, I didn't advertise it, but people knew that it. I had my own plane. I like to fly around.

So I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I faked my own death in a plane crash?

So I had it all figured out. I was going to take some pictures of myself and let everybody know that I'm down in Arizona flying around on my plane, flying over the Grand Canyon or some shit. And then I was going to try to construct a story where my plane and me disappeared in Mexico.

Somehow I. Misnavigated and ended up in Mexican airspace, got lost, probably ran out of gas, my plane went down, and the Mexican authorities were searching for me. And I was going to leak that story or have someone else leak it and basically make everybody think I was dead.

Now, at the time, I was president of the company, and it was a publicly held company, and I was an officer of it.

So, I knew there was some inherent risk in that story. And I went to my boss, Harvey Schiller. He was the president of TBS Sports at the time. I said, and I never asked Harvey permission to do anything. Never.

Well, and he never required it. He let me, he had confidence in me to do what I did. But I thought, you know, maybe I should, before I fake my own death, I should probably give my boss a heads up. Yeah. Yeah.

That's fair. That's fair. It'll be awkward when I come back to life.

So I went to Harvey and I explained the whole scenario. I told him how I was going to pull it off. He never said a word. He just sat there and listened, kind of moved his head up and down a couple of times. And I got all done.

And he said. No. E with you. Won't be doing that, you know, and then he explained why. Because, as an officer of the company, it could have a negative effect with shareholders, right?

Looks like. Manipulation of stocks or whatever, whatever his excuse was. But I didn't get to do that because that was in the summertime. It was like, well, that would have been. September.

So I was going to fake my own death about three weeks before Halloween Havoc. And then I was going to come back as a ghost of myself and get it bought to the badge. Yeah. I didn't get to pull that one. Man, damn you, Harvey.

I know, right? That would have been one of the greatest stories ever told. Oh, man.

So, you know, you did mention him.

So I'm going to ask, you mentioned, you know, you wanted the fight with Vince to happen. You're pretty prominently featured in the Netflix documentary. Do you have any thoughts on how that turned out? You know, I think the producers did the best they could with what they had. Yeah.

You know, keep in mind that that whole documentary was Vince's idea initially.

So, all of the interviews and everything that you saw as a part of that series. That was Vince. Sharing what he wanted to share. He was, he was.

Okay.

He was building his own brand. As off the wall as that sounds, I think Vince prides himself on being. A renegade and doing things differently than everybody else, being his own man. He fought the government, you know, back in the Seroi trial and won. He's very proud of that.

So I think. Everything that we heard from Vince McMahon during the course of that documentary series was Vince branding Vince. Yeah. Sh hits the fan. With the lawsuit from Janelle Grant, all of a sudden Vince is gone.

He's not doing any more interviews. The producers probably sat down and they had a plan going in, and now all of a sudden, the subject of the story is gone, and they've got to finish the story.

So, I think they did the best they could with what they had, number one. And I think they did a good job of. Speaking to the non-wrestling fans, I mean, there's a lot of people around the world that know of WWE, but you know, they don't file online and get all involved in the day-to-day behind the scenes and the rumors and all that.

So I think for the largest percentage of the audience. It was a revealing series. I think for the hardcore, you know, guys like you that just like to watch wrestling and are familiar and watch old tapes, you probably didn't learn too much new. Yeah. I think we got a good look at the kind of bizarre, not bizarre, but dysfunctional relationship between Vince and particularly Shane.

Yeah. That father-son dynamic was pretty touching. I could relate to that in a lot of ways. And I think it was very, very honest. Shane was completely honest in that.

That would hit me pretty hard because I know Shane a little bit and like him a lot. But the rest of it was all stuff that hardcore wrestling fans probably already were aware of. Yeah. Eric, we are getting close to the end here. We have Some questions that we ask every guest that comes on the No Contest Wrestling Podcast, all four of them.

But, um, As a fan, or even in your position, as a uh Somebody in the creative. When was the first time wrestling broke your heart? Mm.

It's probably started for me in 98. Mm-hmm. The effects of the mergers. You know, it wasn't just the Time Warner merger, it was now the AOL Time Warner merger. I really became disenchanted.

With wrestling in general and particularly Turner broadcasting at that time, there was a few things that happened along the way. You know, up until that point, like 95, 96, 97, if Ted Turner would have called me on a Monday and said, hey, I need you to. Cut your left hand off by Tuesday morning and come back to work on Wednesday. I would have done it. That's the indication.

I'm a very loyal person, and I felt like I was given such a great opportunity. I was blessed, and I knew it. And I would have done anything. For Turner Broadcasting or Ted Turner at that point in time. But things changed pretty dramatically, and it wasn't the same company anymore.

And it became apparent to me that the loyalty that I had was not being reciprocated in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it was the opposite of that. That really did break my heart. That took a lot out of me. And it proceeded to get worse as time went on.

Uh another question that we like to do here, we like to set up a s scenario. How many people should be in the bar? 50. Yeah, 50. All right, so you're in the bar of 50 guys who don't want you in there.

It's you and we're doing four other wrestlers. Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah, yeah, so you are an accomplished black belt. You can handle your own, but we need you to pick four guys to team up with. To make sure you guys get to the car and out of that bar.

And we've got great answers from CM Punk, Swerve Strickland, and Mark Henry about this.

So we're interested to hear your take. Ming, number one, Brock Lesnar, number two. Kurt Angle, number three. Uh I don't think I need four. Moving on!

Yeah. Just those those three in you? See, here's how this would go. And Eric, by the way, everyone knows the stories about Ming Haku, how tough he is. I'm sure you can attest to this, right?

I've never seen it firsthand, but I've heard enough of it from people that I absolutely trust, and I have no doubt. But I would have thrown Sting in, I would have thrown Ming in first. Mm-hmm. And The other 37 guys that are watching the three guys that Ming is pulling apart, piece by piece. Those 37 guys go, yeah, they need me jumping down here.

Why don't you guys come on up and we'll buy you around? Yeah, that's probably how that would went, right? But that's a formidable exactly.

Now, it is the, you know.

Okay.

The the 19-year anniversary. of us losing the great Eddie Guerrero. I want to give you time to say some words about Eddie on on Today, the 19-year anniversary of us losing, one of the best to ever step in. He was not only one of the best, I think he was one of the most loved, you know, to this day. people still Get teary-eyed.

People that knew Eddie, including me, will get teary-eyed talking about him. Eddie. Eddie was so passionate. about life. but especially about wrestling.

He put a lot of pressure on himself. He wanted to be the very best he could be. He was tough to work with at times because he was so passionate. And anybody that's passionate, truly passionate, intensely passionate about what they do, can sometimes be tough to be around. And Eddie wore his emotions on a sleeve.

He was not only passionate, you knew exactly what he was passionate about. I got to know Eddie in a weird way. We became friends. But Over a period of time. Eddie and I were very much alike in the sense that.

We're both kind of aggressive personalities. We were, obviously. We're both pretty aggressive personalities. We were both very emotional. Um And it could be intense.

And there were times when Eddie and I would bump heads and we'd argue. And, you know, the famous story about me throwing a cup of coffee on him, and which I didn't really do. I threw the coffee, it hit the floor and splashed on him. It's technically, yes, I guess I threw coffee on him. It's a technicality.

Technicality. In court, I would have gotten off in court. Tomato, tomato. Yeah. But Every time Eddie and I had one of those moments, and sometimes they were.

intense, and sometimes there were just disagreements. But we'd talk it out.

Sometimes we'd yell it out.

Sometimes they were Swear words involved. But whenever it was done, we'd sit down and we'd talk about it. And somehow or another, we got closer. It's like no matter how tough things got between us, when it was all over, we became better friends as a result of it. I think it was respect.

I respected him for sticking up for what he believed in. I think he respected me for. holding my ground to the extent that I did. Um And we just built a level of respect for each other. I remember the last time I saw Eddie, right before he died, he lived in Phoenix at the time, and so did I.

And we were both on the same flight coming back from a Monday Night Raw. And we were waiting for our luggage together down on baggage claim. And just had an amazing conversation. He gave me a big hug. Told me he loved me, and that was the last time I saw him.

And I'll I'll Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. That's amazing.

Eric, so let me ask you this. The most successful people I know don't have a lot of regrets. There's not a lot of things that they say they would change, but I'm here to ask you this. If you could. Give me three things that you would do differently.

during your time running WCW? Are there three things that you can maybe like point at or or think about that you would have changed or a person you would have pushed or a storyline you would have done differently. Yeah, not so much on storylines or people that I would have pushed or not pushed. I think And I don't regret it. I mean, I did the best I could with what I had to work with.

Like I said, I was loading on the job, but I wasn't really good at managing people. Um I was either hot or cold. on people. And if I was hot on you. I could.

Tolerate a lot. I could work with you. I could compromise. There's a lot of things that I could do to try to make something better if I really believed in someone. But once I got to the point where I lost that confidence in someone, I was pretty cold.

And there was No, no turning back, right? I just would. Erase that person from my consciousness, so to speak. And I wish I would have been better at that because I'm sure there were some great people. There were some people that I could have worked with and possibly worked really, really well with, but I just didn't give them a chance.

I didn't have the patience. And I think also the confidence in myself. If I would have had more confidence in myself at that time in certain respects, it would have been easier for me to listen more and judge less. Yeah. But That's one thing I would have liked to achieve.

I wish I had the maturity then that I, I guess, I do now, you know. That's one thing. And honestly, you know, I remember in August of 1998, I got called into a meeting. This was the beginning of the whole Time Warner AOL crap. I got called into a meeting.

We're riding high. WCW is making more money than it ever had. We're blowing WWE out of the water every week. We're making money hand over fist. And I got called into a meeting and I.

I didn't know what the meeting was about. It was like a day before. I said, just come to come to this office. It was a. off-site building.

called techwood so all the executives who were come to this meeting 10 o'clock We want to introduce you to some people. Cool. I show up. I'm wearing jeans. I hadn't shaved in three days, you know.

Probably wearing a t-shirt, drove there on my motorcycle for crying out loud because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know who I was meeting. And that was typical for me at that point in time. I didn't wear suits to work every day or anything like that.

So I show up, and there's a table with about 10 or 12 people, and they're all dressed in their banker suits, and the women are all dressed like they're executives, well, they were.

So they go around the table and they introduce themselves to me.

Now, a couple of them I knew, but the vast majority of them I'd never seen before. Uh And I'm sitting at this table and I'm delivering everybody's names. And then they proceed to go around the table, and each one of them would tell me how they thought I should be running WCW. And I'm simply going, wait a minute. Were any of you people around when?

This company was only grossing $25 million a year and they were losing $10 million in the process. And now we're making $350 million a year. And depending on whose accounting you want to believe, we're profiting about 60 to 80 million. And that was just like three years ago, folks. Do you remember that?

Didn't matter. And I get down to the end of the table, and there's a guy there. He ended up becoming this hugely successful television executive. His name is Joe Yuvo. He was the head of ad sales.

return to broadcasting at the time. And Joe Starts telling me what he thinks I should do differently and thought that we should appeal more to kids instead of 18 to 49 year old men.

So basically, go back to what I was doing before when we were losing money hand over fist.

So, Joe proceeds to tell me what he thinks I should do to run wrestling and make it better. And the show, the name of the show was actually Monday Nitro. People just called it Nitro, but it was actually called Monday Nitro.

So In front of all of His peers Other executives, people on the executive committee at Turner Broadcasting, people who are making two million dollars a year in salaries. In front of all those people, I said, Joe, let me ask a question. What night of the week is Nitril on? It was a trick question. And he paused long enough for me to go, that's what I thought.

It's on Monday nights. You should check it out. Mm.

And when I walked out of that, I said that. I was, and this guy was so far up the food chain, farther than me. I figured, well, okay, I just committed career suicide, but I'm good at it. These people, I don't want to work with these people. They don't know what they're talking about And I didn't get fired for that.

I should have, but I didn't. But I told my wife when I got home that day: I said, you know what? I'm going to resign. There's no way I could see the handwriting on the wall, and I didn't want to be a part of it. But I talked myself out of quitting.

Had I resigned at that point in time. my career trajectory would have been a lot different. What? I'm just not that guy. I don't like to quit.

I mean, I will if I'm. Forced to if it's either quit or die, I guess I'll quit. It I just couldn't get myself to quit, but I wish I would have. I regret that. All right, Eric, December 5th.

Queens is in the house. Eric Bischoff, one shot. MLW, let these people know. Paul Walter Hauser, the actor. We ended up doing an interview with him on my I have a YouTube show called Wise Choices.

Okay.

And I like to interview people that are. Not necessarily in the wrestling business, but. tangentially in the wrestling business. And I found Paul's story so fascinating because here's this guy who's become a phenomenal actor. He's busy as hell.

He's just His career is off the charts. We're hoping to have him here one day. And he's. And he wants to be the next rock. You know, like Rock got into the professional wrestling business, worked his way up, became a big superstar, and then transitioned into feature films.

Paul Is becoming a big star in feature films, but he really wants to be. A professional wrestler. He's like doing it in reverse, right? And I found that story fascinating.

So I'm interviewing him on the show, and hemp was a big fan of WCW and he remembered a lot of the stuff that I did. And we started reminiscing and talking, and it was a live show. And Paul says, you know what, you should come back and just take over MLW one night. Turn into what you think a wrestling show should be. And I laugh and go, okay, that's fun.

That'd be great. Yeah. You know, your boss may have an issue with that. You might want to run that bike bauer before he starts throwing that out there. He goes, oh, yeah, watch this.

I'll call him right now. Wow. Calls him up on the phone. He pitches the idea and he puts the phone up to the microphone. And of course, he says, Yeah, let's do it.

So here I am. There you go again.

Well, you know what's so cool though, is I've already started, you know, I've started talking to Court and people on his team, Jared and others on the creative side. And I'm, you know, like I told you before, I missed the creative collaboration, and that's what's starting to happen now.

So I'm having a blast with it. That's awesome. I'm going to come in and just try to make the show feel as much like. My show, as I possibly can. And I'm really looking forward to that.

It's going to be nothing but fun. I can't wait to do it. Awesome. That's amazing.

Eric, don't be surprised if one day, you know, O'Shea and I were talking. Maybe one day we'll put together a no-contest wrestling podcast independent card.

So you might get a call one day from one of us going, Easy E, we need you here. Hey, I've I'd love that. You know, I like to have fun in wrestling. I don't want a career any longer. I just don't want to make that big of a commitment because being full-time in wrestling is a 24-hour day job, seven days a week.

You're either doing it. planning it Thinking about it, dreaming about it when you're trying to sleep. It's a full-time thing. I just don't have room for that in my life anymore. But.

This is fun. You know, I even told court when we first started talking. I said, We started negotiating my fee. And I said, I don't want to talk about it. I don't really care about it.

In fact, whatever you were going to pay me, just write a check to tunnel towers. That's That's good. As long as I'm having fun, I don't care about the money. And this is nothing but fun. That's awesome.

Eric, dude, it has been an honor, a privilege, dude. Thank you so much for giving us the time of day. Just as a fan, I'm going to let everybody, all of our listeners and viewers know, He is one of the best follows on Twitter I could find, or X, whatever you want to call it. I think Meltz gave us 15 stars right now for this. I don't know if we're in that five-star Melzer category or not.

I don't know what he's doing. The minute that jackass gives you five stars, you gotta know 98% of the wrestling audience is never gonna want to listen to more importantly. Where do we land on the Eric Bischoff scale? Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

How'd you like the interview? You guys are blasted. I mean, I don't know how long we've been on, but it seems like five minutes. Anytime you guys want to do this again, you let me know. Eric, thanks, man.

Stay by. To quote Mike Tomlin, stay by your phone. I might need you.

Well, I'll tell you what, I'm probably going to be in LA in another couple of weeks or so. And the next time I come to town, I'll give you a heads up. I'd like to see you live. That'll be fun. Eric, we got a third chair we put right here where this Dodger championship belt is.

It's yours, baby. It's yours. Yeah, man. We love to have you in the studio. We'll do it for sure.

Thank you very much, guys. Thank you so much, Eric. Thank you, brother. Ladies and gentlemen, that about does it, man. Another episode in the book.

In a one-parter. One-parter. One-parter. Aren't y'all happy? It's a little long, but shut up.

You know, we did it. Eric Bischoff, man. Eric Bischoff. What a great, you know, and we didn't want to go down the road that.

So much of Eric has already been known and told.

So we want to try to get a little fresh perspective.

Some stories that maybe people never heard. And I think we did that. We got a couple of them. TJ, please tell them where to find us. Oh, that's right.

Well, if you're on the old Twitter, you can find us at There's No Contest on Instagram, No Contest Wrestling Podcast. And on YouTube, we're part of the Rich Eisen Show network. Yeah, so we appreciate you guys. We will be back next Wednesday. You know where to find us.

You know where we'll be. We hope to see you there as well. This is the No Contest Wrestling Podcast. Don't turn your back on the wolf pack. might wind up in a body bag.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk sleep number people. There's a reason why. Sleep number is the official sleep and wellness partner of the National Football League because in the NFL, there's no margin for error.

One mistake can change the outcome of a game, and science proves quality sleep can help boost reaction time, recovery time, and overall athletic performance. Imagine what it can do for you. I know about it. My sleep number setting is 60. My wife's is 70.

It's just 10 numbers of different. But It really does make the difference. We can adjust our side of the bed the way that we want and get the perfect quality sleep that we need to be more ourselves. in work, around the kids. It's awesome.

Get ready. And get yourself to a sleep number store. If you're in the market for a new bed, you should stop at a sleep number store and why not? It's awesome. Again, it is a reason why it's the official sleep and wellness partner of the National Football League.

Take it from me, you'll love Sleep Number. Mm-hmm.