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Guy Evans joined David Baldino and I to talk about his new book "BEYOND NITRO: UNTOLD STORIES FROM THE WCW ERA". It was an enlightening conversation that gave great insight into what was really going on financially in WCW from the company's boom period to its demise.
Below you will find a transcript of the show. We apologize for any spelling errors. The translation program did the best that it could!
If you are interested in getting the book, you can do so at:
or at:
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to the elite section of pwinsider.com. This is Dave Scher. I'm joined by the Champ the former champ, David Baldini, and we have a special guest with us today here on the Business of Wrestling. We're joined by Guy Evans, who is going to impart a lot of knowledge on us over however long this podcast goes about the the spectacle that was backstage in the corporate towers of WCW back in the day.
We hope you enjoy this and you learn a lot from it. I already know David's doing fine, so I'm gonna first ask Guy, how are you today, guy?
I'm doing great, Dave. I really appreciate you guys inviting me on the show. Great to talk to you.
Alright, before we get into the topics we're gonna talk about.
Let's do the plug. Do the plug, sell the shirt guy. Sell the shirt.
I dare say that quite a few people listening to this probably have already got into the new book. But for everyone who hasn't you may be familiar with the original Nitro book, which I wrote back in 2018 or I should say published back in 2018.
It was a three and a half year process to get there. But the Nitro book I think it's safe to say, one of the, books of the last sort of decade in wrestling literature, if you like, that really made the most impact. Of course it inspired the who killed WCW Show, which a lot of people saw on vice TV last year and was really responded to very favorably.
The book that I've just come out with is essentially a sequel to that book. It's called Naturally Beyond Nitro, where I'm looking at a number of stories that really I just didn't have the the time or the space to get into in the first book and bringing to light, I would say a lot of revelatory information.
When the Nitro book first came out, I think for about half a second, the reaction was what else could there possibly be left to say about WCW? And I think when people got a chance to read the book, they realized there was quite, quite a lot. And I think the same applies here. Whether it be, the new details in this book on WC W's profitability or lack thereof as a division within corporate total broadcasting we actually get into the actual recorded itemized figures on the WCW book.
So this isn't relying on, a newspaper account that says, w CW generated this much in a particular year, or, any sort of guesstimate as to what they were making. This is getting into almost on a line item by line item basis, what the official Turner Book said as it related to w cw.
We have tons of information on that. We have tons of new information on the WWF purchase of WCW and why. Some of the figures that I think we've all accepted in relation to what the WWF's outlay was for WCW is actually way off the mark, and we can get into that today if you'd like to. Oh, absolutely.
And tons of other stuff as well. So I'll just, I know we want to get into the interview, so I'll just say, for people who enjoyed the first book Beyond Nitro is the name of this book. And like I say, it's worth your time because of the, it's a similar writing style and over a hundred new interviews, but a lot of new information as well.
I'm gonna check that out. I definitely am. I, as, before I turn it over to David, I do want to repeat something that I said before we went on the air,
To you guys, and that's that back in the day, because I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I had a lot of sources in w CW that I was reporting on as things went on, but I had a deep throat kind of source in that company that.
I knew things that I couldn't report even though I knew they were true and I saw documents but it was such a small circle of people that would've had their hands on those. I would've been putting a bullseye on a very small group of people. So I'm very curious to hear some of the things you have to say and I do want to ask before I throw it over to David what compelled you to do this and how did you find and again I'm not asking you to give away trade secrets, but how were you able to ascertain this information and get your hands on these documents?
Especially, talking going on 25 years after the fact?
Yeah, it was, I would say a process, at this point, because I've been. When you look at, working on the first book, I know this book, this is a 10 year journey, in totality. So there's certain contacts and relationships that I've built over that time that, thankfully have been really beneficial when it comes to putting together these books.
I had a lot of the stuff that I just mentioned there as it related to Wws finances, for example, back in 2018, but not, what I was subsequently able to to get access to. And I think that's, it's safe to say that's probably a first for. Any book in this category to actually be able to look on such a granular level in terms of, where they were allocating revenues and expenses.
And we've always heard, this conjecture about things such as intercompany allocations and the idea that, they were moving things around freely in that corporation. And within the span of two chapters in this new book I actually lay out in very specific terms exactly how they were doing that and respond to the arguments on either side as to, to what extent that matters.
Just to quickly address your first point there, Dave. As you can tell, I. Grew up on the other side of the Atlantic. So in terms of how I first became interested in this or got into this world, so to speak it really started, being a fan back in the Monday Night Wars era.
And even though for us it was a different feel being in the UK obviously as compared to the us the wrestling boom was something that certainly hit our shores as well. The WWF always had a much greater footprint in the uk, but WCW was something that, at least in my sort of social orbit everyone was aware of, for a particular point in time.
And at the end of the Monday night wars, that was really. Sort of the extent of my interest in wrestling for quite some time. Stuck around for about a year or so, was really interested to see how they would integrate, the w CW talent. And like a lot of other people, evidently, if you go back and look at the ratings, I was one of the, one of the many millions who checked out for a while.
But in terms of, what led me to actually writing a book and then following up with this second book, I think it was just being dissatisfied with some of the other retrospectives to do with WCW. I never, it is not really my style to get into tearing those things apart.
But what I will say is just, I always found it curious that we would never actually hear from a lot of the principal actors, if you will, or the key people who were involved with W CW and indeed Turner Broadcasting as well. There were a lot of accounts where you would either hear from no one who was actually involved, or if you did, in the case of a WWE produced documentary, for example, it would be the same rotating group of talking heads.
And there were a lot of people, whether they be, Jamie Kelner, who obviously made the decision ultimately to cancel the programming or Harvey Schiller or Brad Siegel, or any number of shadowy figures that we would never actually hear from, it seemed. And so I took that on as a bit of a challenge and thought if no one else is gonna do it, I'm gonna give it a go.
And obviously the book was received very favorably and I'm really thankful for that. It,
It's interesting how eloquently you put that, and I've always, I heard somebody say when I was younger, a Brit could read the telephone book and it'd be more interesting than listen to an American talk.
And I agree. I love the English accent. It's just it just makes things seem a little classier to your point. And, David knows this and everybody listening to this knows this. The reason I personally got into the wrestling business was not my grand plan. It was, I was, I came along at a time where I was able to be a fan and share my writings with people for free on the internet back when it was Usenet, which look it up kids if you really wanna be bored.
And then I got some notoriety. I made some connections and I started. To see things being quote unquote for whatever being reported that I personally knew were not true. And a lot of that, as I mentioned earlier, I had a deep throat in WCW and a lot of the things that were being reported by some outlets at the time were blatantly false.
And I really find the fact that you would undertake this and do this kind of digging. Not only do I think it's something that's really you deserve some, a lot of credit for it. But you waited through a lot to get through this.
That's right. I think what happens is when you embark on something like this, if you didn't realize it at the outset, you learn very quickly that, you're dealing with a subject that is a major part of a lot of people's lives.
We think about of course, certain names that come to mind immediately, whether they be, the Eric Bischoffs of the world, or people who had that level of involvement with WCW. But as you know very well, Dave, because you were reporting on it so well at the time there were, 150 plus people who lost their jobs when WCW went away, and this was in almost.
Every case that I've been able to ascertain, having spoken to the large majority of those people this was a major turning point in their personal and or professional lives when WCW ended. And that time period whether it be the mid to late nineties or when WCW began its ascent and then obviously, collapsed the way it did.
This was a, like I say, a huge part of their lives. And so you have to have some empathy for that. And you have to understand that, okay, if I'm gonna talk about something that I wasn't personally privy to, I didn't work there. I wasn't on, on the inside at that time. I was watching like, like everyone else as a fan.
Then I really owe it, I think, to not only the reader, but also the people who were there to try to incorporate as many perspectives as possible and to try to tell the story in the most accurate way that is possible. Recognizing that inherently there are always gonna be limitations when it comes to that.
But when you look at the first book, that was the product of over 120 interviews. This book I interviewed or conducted another a hundred plus. I think I lost Canada about 108, but it's somewhere in that region. And I didn't want anyone to say. They weren't given the opportunity to contribute or, oh, he's full of, you know what, when it comes to this particular thing, 'cause I worked in that department and he's got that all wrong.
And again, you recognize, like with anything else, you're never gonna have the time and the ability to speak to absolutely everyone and get every single detail that you can. But I would like to think that I got somewhat close to that, or as close as human humanly possible. So I think it just goes back to putting yourself in other people's shoes and having some empathy for, again, I wasn't there I wasn't a part of it.
So rather than sit back and play, it's not even Monday morning quarterback is it? It's a quarter century later. It's the easiest thing in the world to sit back and say, they should have done this, or they should have done that. But I suppose it, it would be like, if I. Decided to write a book about PW Insider and didn't speak to you, Dave, and didn't speak to Mike and didn't speak to David.
Ultimately I'd probably be missing the mark in a number of ways. So that, that, that was my mindset when it came to how to approach the book.
So basically what you're telling me is you're a real journalist and that is awesome. I, now, before I turn it over to David, and I'm gonna let David make the call on this, can we talk about the WWE sale price now, David?
Or you got that on your list for later on?
You make the call. I was gonna go. I think it, it fits better after delving into the other aspects of the financials, because it's the end of the story if you'll, but it's certainly on the list.
Good. Alright. Takeover, David?
Yes, sir. Guy, just to set the stage here for the listeners, the WCW was technically.
Under Turner Broadcasting, which was under Turner Entertainment Group, and within the overall financials for time Warner, if you will, WCW is actually listed as quote unquote other within the income statements and the balance sheets, correct.
Yes. After the, so prior to the A OL Time Warner merger it was listed in a segment that was literally known as other, that, as we talk about in the book, included a number of other entities such as actually Atlanta Braves, the CNN Airport Network and some other subsidiaries under Turner. After the a OL Time Warner merger, a similar sort of categorization happened except it was put into a category known as networks, which which I think is what you're getting at here.
That that sort of structure in terms of how they categorize w CW makes it very difficult to make an evaluation about its profitability or lack thereof, unless you actually have access to the WCW specific income statement which thankfully I was able to get access to.
And you mentioned intercompany allocations, and that's a huge part of this entire story. And so basically in the way that worked and I, when I started out at college, I worked at a a large accounting firm and I was actually part of the transfer pricing group, which is similar to what this intercompany allocation stuff is.
And basically under generally accepted accounting principles, which is gap for all you that wanna look it up and snore yourself to sleep. But basically intercompany allocations are completely legal. It's essentially moving expenses or revenues between one group or another.
Especially since W CW as reference was under this other group. It made it real fuzzy on how these expenses and the revenues came in and out. And I, I think, and I'll probably get a say a, a key word here. I think that the line between truth and actual fraud is pretty thin here.
Would you agree on that?
In the, in this new book, and there's two chapters, as I mentioned, where we go into this in, I think, really unprecedented detail, I distinguish between. The more straightforward problem of fraud versus as you, it sounds like you know very well, David, you know the term which is commonly called creative accounting.
And absolutely. I think the evidence at this point is rather overwhelming. That is exactly what was happening with internal broadcasting as it relates to WCW. And we've heard a lot of this anecdotally over the years, we've heard people say or claim, I know they were moving money around, we didn't get credit for this.
We didn't get credit for that. What has always been a limiting factor in those discussions is I think no one's been able to produce any actual evidence to support that. And that's not to say that, those testimonies don't mean anything. Of course they do. You have to highly value. The testimony of people who are actually there.
Because it's not just coming from the w CW people. Historically, we've heard that from a number of people who worked for turn of finance as well. But I want to give some specific examples, if I may. Off, off the top of my head here just trying to think back to what I wrote when I was doing the book, because people might think that we're talking in generalities or in the abstract.
So I wanna just pin down a couple of specific points for people to wrap their head around. For example, if we look at the year of 1997, right? This is a really key year in the history of WCW. Obviously this was a year in which. They won the Monday Night Wars uninterrupted from, the first week in January to the last week in December.
And there's no other year in w CW history where you can say that obviously the NWO becomes this cultural phenomenon. This is when you have, Dennis Rodman wrestling at Bacher, the Beach and so forth. You have the company really starting to extend itself into various licensing and merchandising agreements that it hadn't delved into before.
Not only pay-per-view, but episodes of Nitro were taking place at massive arenas and setting, gate records and so forth. If I was to ask, most people listening to this. How profitable do you think WCW was recognized as being internally in 1997? And by the way, let me pause right there.
There's a reason why I deliberately phrased it in that way. I'm not asking you how profitable was WCW in 1997, but how profitable was it recognized as being internally in that corporation? I think most people would probably, take a guess. At the very least in the millions of dollars, maybe they made 10 million, 20 million, 30 million.
I think Eric Bischoff in his first book stated that from what he understood in 1998. W CW made $55 million in profit. So some people listening may use that as a baseline and say it's gotta be, somewhere in that ballpark. Surely for 97. In fact, the amount that was recognized on the Turner Books in terms of what w CW made in net profit was 840,000 for 1997.
All right. Now, so let,
let's be fairly clear here, guy. And say you are not disputing that they made more than eight, 40,000. You're, because I know a lot of people take it the wrong way and say oh, that's what, no, he's saying that is what was officially
Public or submitted to the government.
This is what this made. And I'm guessing that might have been part of the impetus for you to find out what the truth was.
So I think what's really important to understand, and I think David, you alluded to this several minutes ago as well, is by having the structure where they could combine WCW with a host of other entities in this category, you could basically present on in an SEC filing, for example, the combined performance of all of those entities as truthful in consolidation without having to get into here's how we moved revenues, expenses, and other items around within that category, right?
So it's if David was head of a division, Dave, you were, and I was as well, and collectively, we generated $10 million in revenue in a particular year, and all of our businesses were categorized as other. Then on that SEC filing, you'll see when it comes to the category of other $10 million was generated in revenue.
Now when you really get into how the sausage is made, though it may be that. You know what that revenue that David generated, actually we should recognize that at guy's company. 'cause guy's company had something to do with that. And actually, this huge investment that we made in guy's company a couple of years ago where we had to take on a lot of debt to make that happen.
Let's go and move that debt over to Dave's company and so on and so forth. But you don't get that level of insight if you're just looking on publicly available records. So the question is, how did they get to 840,000 then? And there's a number of factors that we go into the book and I don't wanna give the whole farm away, but what I will say is.
There's certain things that you wouldn't even, I certainly didn't even think of until I started to get into these documents. For example, according to the official TBS records, again, as distinct from what necessarily was actually happening you'll find that when it comes to the category of licensing, they credit WCW with making $49,000 in profit for the entire year of 1997.
Now, I wanna remind people, and again, everyone listening to this, I'm sure will be aware of this, is when the NWO is absolutely on fire. And the argument is that WCW was making in terms of its profitability, less than a thousand dollars a week. I think it works out to about $942 per week when it comes to licensing.
Now you might say how is that, how could that happen? If you look into it, you'll find. It wasn't actually until October of 1997 that WCW had its own divisionally specific licensing program. Prior to October of 1997. It entered into license agreements under a proxy, another Turner Enterprise, which was called Turner New Media, Inc.
So that kind of gives you an educated guess as to where those revenues would have been recognized prior to October of 1997. Another factor that influenced, its performance in that particular year was the the transfer of David probably has the exact number ahead of me. I'm going off the top of my head here, but close to $3 million in what we just talked about.
Intercompany allocations, right? So one thing that's really important to understand when it came to how they did things at Turner is, people sometimes will invoke this phrase rights fee when it comes to WCW and they'll say that Turner we're paying WCWA rights fee or a license fee.
And inherent in that argument is. People are drawing an analogy to the kind of arrangements that we might see today with WWE or a EW, for example. The way that it worked at Turner could not have been more different from that kind of system principally because what would happen is WCW would get allocated a certain amount for its programming, but depending on the priorities of the organization, that amount would often get revised or what they called settled or offset prior to the end of not only a particular year or quarter, but actually at the end of a particular month.
And this is a pattern that continued by the way, until the very end. So if you look at January of 2001, for example, you'll see that originally WCW was allocated $2 million in in what they call programming license fees. But by the end of the month, essentially Turner reclaimed about $1.35 million of that and sent it elsewhere because.
They needed that money for other divisions of the company at that time. So that sort of created in that example, an artificial gap of, as I say, around 1.3 $5 million because of that that, that transfer process. We mentioned the intercompany allocations. We mentioned the lack of recognition of some of that licensing revenue.
One more point that I'll make very quickly, and then there's others as we as I mentioned that relate to 1997 is the allocation of debt on WC W's books. So there was close to $7 million in just one year, 1997 that was allocated. It was called an allocated interest expense. That was supposed to represent debt that was accrued somewhere within that division in the past.
And again, we're not saying that this debt was illusory, we're not saying it's imaginary. We're not saying someone sitting there and saying, okay, let me just type it on my spreadsheet. $7 million here, that's gonna be allocated to WCW. What we're saying is, some debt that was accrued and was being serviced as a result of activities in the past was allocated to Wtw in that particular year.
Why? Because in that year where it had a pop in revenue, the revenue was there to offset the interest expense. And that makes sense if you think about it from not a wrestling fan point of view, not the point of view that probably all of us come from where we say that isn't fair that the company shouldn't have been treated that way, and so on and so forth.
If you look at it in a very detached, from a corporate mindset, you can see why they would say. We have this division here that's the redheaded stepchild to begin with. Historically, it hasn't done very well this year, and they may not even understand the reasons why. For whatever reason this company is seemingly printing money at this point.
So let's use some of that revenue here to offset, other activities that have happened in the corporation or in the company. And I know this to be true for a number of reasons, specifically because I've presented these findings to people who were controllers, people who worked internal finance, people who have a very intricate understanding of the accounting methodologies that were happening at that time and time.
And again, I've been told there's absolutely no way that WCW should have had an interest expense of close to $7 million for one financial year. Because if you look at. The prime rates at that time or the cost of borrowing money, essentially, that would imply one of two things.
Either that there was an an inherited debt of close to $80 million or the other. The other possibility if we're gonna play sort of theoretical game is that somehow Turner entered into an ungodly financing agreement, which we know isn't the case when it comes to W cw. So the the only other option which, I have been able to confirm through showing this, these findings, as I mentioned to, to key sources, is that they were using interest that was elsewhere and parking it on the w CW books.
And the last point that I'll make about that as well is and this is where it gets quite interesting. That was a practice that was discontinued by the way, when WCW started to become recognized as a money loser. Because again, from a, corporate standpoint, just zooming out for a second, it doesn't make any sense to continue to allocate debt on a division that you are recognizing as losing money.
So it was when they were having these huge jumps in revenue, 96, 97, and 98 specifically, that practice was going on. Again, this is not like a, a level of insight I suppose, that you would be able to garner from publicly available documents. And even if you look at it on face value, it doesn't give you the full story either, because as you said quite rightly, Dave, a few minutes ago we're not saying that WCW actually only made less than a million bucks, 840,000 we're saying that after all of these accounting adjustments were made that's the figure that they came up with, which is pretty amazing.
I think.
I have a quick question, and when you were talking about basically they said to w cw, oh, now you're finally making money, so we're going to use you to pay off some of the debts from the things that aren't making money.
And in the past, they probably used some other entities to do the same for WCW.
Did you ever find out, like back in the past when WCW was losing money, who they used to cover their debts?
So what gets really tricky, and this is where again, if you look at both of these chapters, we're talking about nearly 20,000 words where we go into all of this stuff in a tremendous amount of detail, is.
A according to people such as Dick Cheatham, for example, who was formerly the group controller with TBS, he, his testimony is that essentially WCW didn't have any divisional debt on its books. And this is where things get quite complicated, right? Because for example, let's go back to a year when WCW was recognized as losing money pre Nitro.
So 1994 according to the official books WCW had in that particular year, an operational loss of close to $11 million. Alright? Now, one of the mitigating factors there, however, if you get into the internal documentation, you will see that while WCW was charged for under the expense of pay-per-view.
And by the way, this was a gratuitous charge because the actual pay-per-view expenses were recognized under two categories. One was called production and one was called wrestling operations. So in addition to that, TBS also charged them a couple of a million bucks for pay-per-view.
In 1994, all of the corresponding revenue for those pay-per-view, which I estimate to be $13.17 million was recognized under the division of Turner Home Entertainment. Okay. So that was a practice that continued for quite some period of time where WCW was actually not getting credit for the revenue that it was generating from pay-per-view.
Again, if you were to look at it just on face value, you'd say, wow, that this company is losing 10, $11 million a year and this is during a year in which it signed Hulk Hogan and was doing good pay-per-view business and things should be firing and also cylinders. What a disaster.
But then when you start to take into account factors like that, it really does muddy the water significantly. And I do just wanna make this point abundantly clear as well. And perhaps David was gonna get to this in one of his questions, but this is something that I always make a point to, to highlight is that.
More than one thing can be true. None of this is to say that for example when WCW began its downturn that somehow this absolves the company and the people who were there from the unbelievable deterioration in the programming that occurred. Especially once we get into 1999 and do we even have to talk about 2000, right?
Any time you have. An 81.5% drop in pay-per-view revenue, which is what happened from March of 99 to March of 2000, where if you remember, March of 99, uncensored Pay-Per-View, they'd run Hogan Flower in the main event. They do the exact same main event the following year at a time when WWBF is, it just the coolest thing in the world.
And you have the rock and, triple H and, Austin obviously sidelined at the time, but they were doing just incredible numbers, even with Stone Cold still yet to return. And w CW was running back, Hogan and Flair for the 500th time. None of this is to detract from I think the the very accurate critiques that people have had over the years about a lot of the creative failures that happened.
But what we're saying is, if you look at, and there's a document that I have, which is from the last day of February, 2001. And it states that according to the Turner Corporation, their official position is that WCW under Turner has lost $126.56 million in cumulative losses from November of 1988 to, as I said, February, I guess it would've been February 28th, 2001.
That was their official position, how they recognized it internally. But when you go back and you look at, okay where do we factor in then the missing pay-per-view revenue, how do we account for the fact that I have found, just in my own research, that over just a four year span $23.1 million in interest expense was allocated onto the w CW books, over $20 million over a four year span.
Was you can chalk it up to what we called intercompany allocations. And there's many other examples that I can give as well. You are not looking at a complete picture because people sometimes treat the subject like the same way we would a lemonade stand, right? They treat corporate finance in that same way.
I spent $10 on lemons and I made $20 today, so my profit is $10. So if we're reading that WCW lost X amount of dollars in a given year, or indeed made a certain amount in a given year, then there's really nothing more to it than that. But like I say, when you actually get into digging into these numbers the, let me put it this way to wrap up.
What is the implication of all of this in my mind it is this, that. At the time when WCW was really firing on all cylinders and was truly, bringing in a tremendous amount of money in 1998, for example, even according to the Turner Books, or as I mentioned, a lot of those revenues are being recognized elsewhere.
They still credited WCW with $188 million in 1998, which is obviously over half a million dollars per day that they're bringing in, in, in revenue. Which is a far cry from where they were in, say 92, 93, 94, obviously. But because of the fact that, these these. Increases in revenues were often being used to offset other items within the company.
In a way, it's unfair. Then later on when the circumstances change and the company has gone through two different mergers with the latter one being the most devastating, to then hold WCW to a different standard and say, this is an absolute, money pit at this point. It's, according to our books, this company is losing $62.5 million and so on and so forth.
Everything that comes with that discussion, and I think, I. A sort of detached observer who, has knowledge about how these processes work, may have looked at that and said, okay, how do we factor in, as we just talked about a couple of minutes ago, those missing revenue items from the past.
And how can we be sure that these programming license fees that you've been allocating to us or actually reflective of what our market value would be if we were not part of Turner Broadcasting? You think about like when WCW Thunder was created, for example, in 1998, there was a modest increase in the allocation that TBS gave WCW for that programming, and Nitro going to the three hours by the way, and it was a little over $10 million, I think $10.48 million, but the cost of production because of expanding to three hours, which is, there's a little bit of an economy of scale involved there, but it's still a third hour of programming in addition to this new live show.
Which Thunder was at the start actually increased production costs by over $12 million. So therefore you have people in W CW who will make the point to you that, we were essentially expanding our programming drastically, and it was a cost neutral activity for WCW. So how do you account for that when you look at the books from that time period?
Because. Again, if WCW was not part of that programming or not part of that corporation, sorry. What would it, what would its programming have commanded at that particular point in time if it had the ability to go out there on the market and and get the best deal for its programming.
I know this is with, we're covering a lot of ground, but it's fascinating. This is fascinating to me. I'll leave it this last. I loving every minute
of this. This is great guy. Go ahead. You cover as much ground as you want. This is fascinating. I'm just, I'm sitting here listening and obviously you finish that point and now I'm gonna turn it over to David.
I'm just gonna keep listening because everything you are saying, I heard at the time, not everything. Obviously you've things. The one point I do wanna make that you made before I turn it back over to David is this, and that's let me
just, let me just say this last very quickly. I was landing the plane.
I promise you to me, I, I had the chance to spend a lot of time talking to Keith Mitchell and he hasn't done, I think he did one podcast interview when he retired from a w he's never spoke to my knowledge, publicly about WCW or TBS. And like I say, he was one of over a hundred interviews I did for this book.
And, the best way I can explain this whole complex mess that we just laid out is, when I asked him, alright does this mean that I need to take with a grain of salt, some of these reports about what the company made or loss in a particular year? And he said, it's not a grain of salt, it's a rock of salt.
He said how do you account for the fact that we weren't even getting credit for the we weren't even getting a prearranged amount for the ad sales during WC W's programming. Which is like a huge part of the equation. So there's so much to this, but I really encourage people, if you're really interested the book lays it all out in a huge amount of detail.
You made a great point about when it got to the end, it was terrible. We all, I'm not just talking about the product, I'm talking about, the revenues that dropped and your 81.5% drop on pay-per-view is a death now, but,
You made a really good point about the fact that if this was an independent company, an a EW or even a WWE who had times when they pulled the water cooler out because they're cutting costs, if they had been able to realize those revenues and glean the profits and put them in coffers, then maybe when things start going badly, they can make changes to, to rebound, WWE did.
They hit rock bottom and then they got strong again in the late nineties. And without having that behind them, they fell victim to a corporate structure that just said, that's a loser. Get rid of it. Would you? Would you comment on that?
Yes. And what I would say in response to that, Dave, and I'd like to, throw this your way actually, and you can tell me if you think what I'm about to tell you, whether or not you would like further information about it.
If you were in a position of. Leadership or if you had any influence over WCW as a company during the time whether you'd be interested in knowing how this figure was generated. So let me throw this at you. If you look at the pre Nitro period, and you look at the stated marketing costs of wws operations, okay?
And again, this is distinct necessarily from the actual amount that was being spent to market WCW, but based on Turner's own methodology and how they categorized, okay, this is a Turner Networks expense. We ran a commercial on TBS, so hey, let's recognize X amount of that with the network, X amount with WCW.
How, in terms of how they figured all of that out. Prior to Nitro, historically that amount was less than 750,000 per year for WCW. So for example, in 94 it was 747,000. Then we go to 95. Obviously Nitro starts in September. If you look at. The stated marketing costs, they now rise to 1.13 million, which kind of makes sense, right?
We're starting a new show. The company is expanding in general. We're bringing in new talent and so forth. That sounds plausible to me. So keep those two numbers in mind, right? 747,000 in 94. Now we go to 1.13 million in 95, so let's go now to 97. So in 97, that amount is recorded at $2.195 million.
Now, again, to me, that sounds pretty plausible actually, because again, a lot of growth has happened in the intervening period. Nitro in 96, 6 expands to two hours. Obviously the company is spending more, or you would think in terms of marketing, its pay-per-view and we're bringing in celebrity talent and so on and so forth.
So I, I can buy that at least based on the methodology that they were applying as I. Being a sort of commensurate expense, right? So 97 2 $0.195 million. So now let's look at 1999, which is a year in which w CW is widely recognized as losing money. So the amount that is recorded on the Turner Books when it comes to W CW for 99 is 23.85 million.
So that is nearly a tenfold or in fact would be a tenfold increase over a tenfold increase from 97 to 99. Now also in the year of 1999, Turner Broadcasting recognized WCW as losing $11.03 million. So if we use 97 as an appropriate baseline, and we go back to that figure, that was 2.195 million, and we look at what happened to the overall budgetary expansion, four.
WCW between 97 and 99. What you will see is overall WC W'S budget expanded by 103.84% between the years of 97 and 99. Okay, so the cost of running WC W's operations based on Turner's accounting methodologies increased 103.84% between 1997 and 1999. Therefore. If you take that marketing cost, that stated marketing cost of $2.195 million, and you extrapolate it to 1999 based on the wider budgetary expansion, you could probably expect a figure somewhere in the region of $4.475 million right?
Now. Some people with a, some people with a marketing background might be saying hold on, marketing costs do not always scale linearly. There's often, that's, that, that can be an exceptional circumstance in a in any company. So I'll grant you that and I'll say, let's double that, right?
Let's go from $4.475 million and let's go to close to $9 million. What you will find, and hopefully everyone's following us here, is even if you. Took that amount in 97 for marketing, and you scale it based on the overall expansion of the W CW budget, and then you double it again. The company still would've been recognized as profitable in 99.
That's with the crazy contracts and God knows there were a lot of them. That's with the programming, just becoming some of the worst wrestling television that anyone had ever seen at that time. That's with the pay-per-view numbers starting to fall off a cliff. It still would have been recognized as being profitable and, the cause of that and how that shift occurred.
We get into, in the book, and I won't necessarily give away the reason here, but this is an example of something that even, Eric Bischoff himself was. Unaware of. Eric obviously was sent home in September of that year. He wasn't around necessarily to see, some of the adjustments that were being made, possibly, potentially with the balance of 1999.
When I when after the book came out and he had a chance to read that, I think he was, I think it maybe confirmed some of the suspicions that he had over the years but was quite surprised to see that it was so brazen. I think anyone, even the most, tr the most ardent true believer of some of the numbers that we've heard over the years when it comes to WCW, would have to admit that, a tenfold increase.
In, in marketing costs, which again, is just that one thing in itself was enough to tilt the company into a state of not being profitable for that year. I think they would have to admit that, that's somewhat let's just say unusual and would probably need a deeper level of analysis if indeed you, you had the ability to do
yeah, you asked me my question, how would I feel in that position if I'm there? See, David will tell you, because we talk about this stuff. I'm a math guy. I'm a numbers guy. I'm a, that doesn't make sense to me, guy. I know I'm a I know what we're doing. I know. And I would be going through those corporate reports.
I would read every single page. Every single page. And I would say that's not true. So when Jamie Kelner got hired, I would already know it's time for me to get outta here because they we're the scapegoat. And that's what they're doing to me. They're gonna say, oh, look what I've done.
And to reiterate what you said, two things can be true. At that point in time. The product was bad. It was on the downside. It wa there were bloated contracts and expenses that were ridiculous, but I think the case you just made and I love that you used the word extrapolation 'cause we don't ever use that enough on this website.
And as a math guy, I love that term. I think you made an excellent point about okay, there were losses, but they were not on that scale. There, there were other factors in play, which I'm sure will be addressed in the book. Absolutely. And now I am gonna turn it over to David. I will be back in about 10 minutes.
I do have something I have to do and I promise David he could conduct this and I've been glomming his heat and I don't wanna do that.
All good. So yeah you mentioned a lot with the intercompany allocations and all that, but clearly there was a narrative here that was trying to be done. And it wasn't just with w cw, you referenced two in the book that with the Atlanta Braves, for example. And this is where I think things get really I don't wanna say shady, but they certainly raise eyebrows, right?
They, the Braves they essentially gave their programming away to TBS. They didn't charge any money for that. And, big reason for that is, is that and baseball and football as well do this. Whereas if you show that you're a, your team, your professional team is losing money, then you don't have to pay certain taxes to the organizations.
And then you also can be, a recipient of revenue sharing.
And
it, that, that was something I. Took note of when you referenced that in, in the book for the Braves. But at some point and this also goes to WCW when they were sold, like at some point Turner sold the Braves.
Turner sold WCW. I would think that once you get into a situation like that, then, as a purchaser of a company, when you're going through your due diligence, I would be digging into all these financial statements and figuring out that, maybe what you're reporting isn't entirely accurate, and that would cause a ton of concern for me as a buyer.
This kind of brings us on to, in a roundabout way Yeah. The matter of the WWF purchase of W cw, because you mentioned the word narrative there, if you look at what I think we have all understood to be the final purchase price as it relates to that transaction the WF initially on a public filing quoted, $2.5 million in cash and then $1.8 million in other expenses related to the transaction.
And later clarified the total amount as being $4.155 million. We're talking about several million bucks, right? We're talking about pennies on the dollar in most people's minds. And that kind of goes hand in hand with the idea that w CW was this disastrous money loser. As I said, the understanding was that it lost $62.5 million in the year 2000 $126.56 million in cumulative losses.
And yeah, why would anyone pay more than a few million bucks for, such a dumpster fire? That's obvious. Where things get trickier, I would say, is when you actually look at how that transac transaction was structured, you'll see that actually the WWF's, total financial outlay, and this is irrespective by the way of.
Some of the other costs it may have incurred as it relates to, that transitionary period. And some of the WWCW talent, the actual amount was almost 10 times. That $2.5 million cost in terms of the cash portion of the transaction, it was closer to $25 million.
And again, I'm towing the line between, I don't wanna give away my own book, but essentially they, one could argue that they structured the transaction in such a way where they'd be able to maximize the financial benefit to a OL Time Warner and receive back something approximating what they thought WCW was actually worth.
And I was able to get my hands on. Some of the balance sheets from that particular point in time and actually quote specific numbers related to what a OL believed wws assets and liabilities to truly represent. You'll see that they were able to structure, one could argue the transaction in such a way where they'd be able to generate much more favorable terms than just a couple of million dollars.
I think that's a narrative that sort of goes along with the losses, as we said. But by doing it in the way that they did they, they were able to, whether intentionally or not, let's just add that as a disclaimer, they were able to evade questions related to just how genuine are these losses?
Is this truly reflective of Wws performance? O obviously there was a massive downturn, but was it really that bad? There probably would've been a heightened level of scrutiny about that. If, for example, you read that, Vince McMahon's company has purchased WCW for $50 million or $60 million, or even $25 million again, someone looking from the outside may have said how in the world can you know, a, a company that has lost its television and is bleeding money, how in the world can it be worth that much money?
Maybe we need to dig into historically some of these accounting practices here, but by offloading it in what you know, is typically called a fire sale you evade those kind of questions. And so I'll leave it up to the readers when they read the book to make up their own minds about that.
But I think basically what we're saying is these two things go hand in hand. It never got to a point where a potential buyer. Would necessarily have the ability or the inclination to delve into missing revenue items and expenses that were being shipped around and so forth.
Because by the time they, they sold the company, it was being offloaded for a few million bucks. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. And for the listeners, if you read the book guy goes into extreme detail about, the true valuation of the sale and how much WWE truly paid, and then also the benefit accounting wise to a OL Time Warner that was outside of just the actual cash received and other stuff, which definitely read the book. 'cause it's fascinating in terms of how that's all done. Eric Bischoff and Fusion Media was originally looking to purchase WCW and they pulled out of that once the television.
Was gone. Once Jamie Kelner said, we're gonna drop it from TT and TBS and we're not gonna show WCW programming anymore. That's when Fusion bailed out. I don't think that anybody, any buyer of the company could have made WCW as it was in its legacy form a viable business without television.
I think once the television was pulled, it was over. It didn't matter who was gonna buy it. Wwe, even when, once they did buy it, they tried to find a home for Nitro and couldn't find one, for example. And so then it was just the asset out purchase essentially, that they was, they bought some contracts of existing wrestlers.
They essentially bought trademarks like the NWO, which are extremely valuable, and they monetized well. And the TV library had WCW maintained the television deal. Based on everything that, you know, with the accounting and stuff like that. Do you think that there was a way, assuming everything's on the up and up, that there was a way to financial profitability, even with what we called the poor creative and all that, if WCW was still in business in 2001?
Now we're getting into an aspect of the book, which I think would definitely take a lot of people by surprise. Yes. Yes. Which I think is what you're referring to here. Yes. Yes. So what I'd like to do, if you give a second, I wanna pull up the exact numbers here Absolutely. So that we can position this the best way that we can if we look at the year or the the first three months in 2001, again, I, gotta restrain myself 'cause I'll just give away. Absolutely. But you'll see the. Some of the reporting that discusses how much money the company was losing in the early part of 2001, there's a number of mitigating factors there.
And that's not to say that they were profitable by any stretch of the imagination because they weren't, but those losses were certainly being enhanced. One, one example that I gave before was the reallocation of program programming and licensing fees. That was happening in, in January and February of 2001 which by itself, contributed several million dollars of the quote loss in early 2001.
But if you look at again, we're gonna use this word extrapolation, if you extrapolate the cost of WCW operations in the first two months of 2001, and keep in mind, this is after. The decision has been made to, for example, tape Thunder, if you remember immediately after Nitro. Yep. Because of doing that, there were reductions in venue fees, there were administrative efficiencies that had occurred.
Marketing costs while still enormous, were scaled back somewhat. There had been preexisting talent cuts going into 2001, which continued in the early part of the year and would have continued under this theoretical scenario, had the year unfolded with w CW as a Turner entity and, obviously massive savings in production costs overall as well.
Not just as a result of taping thunder after Nitro but in many other areas as well. If you take all of that into consideration, what you'll find is they were projecting a budgetary pace of $125.43 million. And what that means is that WCW could have repeated its revenues of 2000 where it recorded $124.59 million in total revenue.
And if you take that budgetary pace of $125.43 million, you'll see that even by repeating that disastrous year, it would've finished within $843,000 of breaking even. And again, that, that is based on Turner's accounting methodologies based on how they decided, okay, what should go on t's books, what should go on TBS, what should go on w cw, so on and so forth.
If you look at so we're not making this assumption or ma making or calculating this based on the assumption that they would've changed any of these internal accounting practices. We're saying literally had things remain the same and had WCW from a revenue standpoint. Merely repeated what it did in the year 2000 because of these massive cutbacks that had already occurred.
It would've got close to quote unquote profitability. So I know sometimes the argument is made that it lost 60 million in 2000 and it was on pace for, another 60 or even 80 million in the year 2001. And like I said even if you just look at that with a little bit of detail, you'll find that there were a number of mitigating factors that influenced that.
But when you take into account the cutbacks that occurred and the scaling back of Wws operations then this is what you find. The roster, for example, was down to 87 wrestlers, which sounds like a lot in early 2001. But that was way down from what it had been certainly in, in 1999, for example.
And, the total. Amount that was earmarked as guaranteed for the entire year of 2001 was a little over $20 million. So from February, 2001 to December, 2001 they were in a position where they had to expend $20 million in guaranteed contracts. But. If you take that figure and you assume that for the entire year the total contractual expenditures reach $25 million, which takes into account the January wage bill, which was 2.6 million, the 20 million from February through December, as I just talked about, and another 2.4 million for example, new talent that may have been brought in.
What you'll see is that w CW actually would've been profitable for the year 2001 because going into 2001, and I hope everyone's following this here its total wage bill was over $31 million per year. So basically what we're saying is, had they, gone through 2001 under this hypothetical scenario and had some of these additional talent cuts occurred.
It could have repeated its performance in the year 2000 and been profitable. And even if those cuts hadn't occurred, and even if the total contractual expenditures remained at over $31 million, which by the way all of these calculations and I get into it in the book, include assumptions around things like pay-per-view bonuses and so on and so forth.
It still would've come within a million dollars of breaking even. So hopefully that, that answers your question. Obviously. We'll never know. And again a massive assumption baked into this is the idea that the programming wouldn't have been canceled, as you said, once the programming was canceled, all of this was null and void.
But we're just highlighting this to to, show people and demonstrate that, to sit back and say it, it was on pace for a similar disastrous performance in 2001. I think the evidence would show that simply isn't true. And,
and you referenced earlier, we fed Bill of Goods.
David, I think what I'm hearing here is we were fed a bill of goods and you know what? I said this to guy earlier. Everything he said and it's fascinating. Yeah, this is really fascinating to me. 'cause I love this, it all jives with what I heard at the time, it was scapegoat city at, basically at that point.
It was, the, but anyway, back to David doing what David does go,
it's just it's fascinating, and unjust in so many ways with, as you referenced, there was 120 some employees that lost their jobs over this. And, if the narrative was different and facts didn't get in the way of a good story here, the entity as a whole, it could have gone a whole lot of different ways. It could have been sold to, a, a, some kind of a private equity firm that partnered with a television station to keep it on the air. It just, the whole future if of the company could have been completely different if the numbers were truly presented as to what they were.
Go ahead. Yes, and I think the key point, just to piggyback on what you said there, is to understand you, you have to take a step back and think about what was the purpose of this wrestling division within that corporation and above all else. I think it's quite clear at this point, and I say this based on speaking to hundreds of people and like I said, getting into this evidence at a really granular detail that WCW was designed to function as programming above all else.
As opposed to being this standalone entity that at some point we are going to try to sell as its own piece. And so we absolutely have to make sure that we're keeping everything tight here because, a couple years down the line we might. Look to offload this division. It's the same old story that we've heard a million times.
As long as Ted was in a position specifically to have autonomy over WCW it was never going to be functioning in that way. So you can actually make the argument, okay, if the idea is that this is just a programming unit, is it really a big deal that we're recognizing pay-per-view revenue elsewhere?
Because, the, it's not like the revenue isn't being recognized, it's just we're deciding to put it on the Turner Home Entertainment books for priorities which are inherent to us as a corporation. And WCW is never gonna go away. So what's the big deal? Ted? Ted loves it. He has an affinity for it.
He has a loyalty towards it. It's always going to be, a part of our portfolio obviously. After the the two mergers happened, the standard changed significantly in terms of how w CW was being looked at and how it was being evaluated. And so in that sense, David, to your point, I think that's unfair that years down the line, now we are gonna treat this like a standalone business, and now we are going to really put a micro a lot of emphasis on how profitable the company is when that hadn't really been, the standard in the past.
So if you think about, remove the
goalpost guy.
There we go. There we go. You summarized it better than I could. Exactly. The goalposts were moved and the real life implications were that a whole lot of people lost their jobs based on a standard that I don't think was necessarily always there and made abundantly clear.
To put a button in all this. 'cause you've given us so much information here in the last hour of like you referenced the 68 pages in the book that really dove into the financials. But, the book is so much more than just that. I think, between the original Nitro book and then Beyond Nitro, you're looking at about 1300 pages on the history of wcw.
And and I'm not much of a reader I'll be honest, but, I read the whole first book. I'm, I obviously, I poured through the financial parts and beyond Nitro, but I've started to get, I've read.
Fascinating unto themselves, just the crazy things that happened, and it's the interviews that, that you've conducted that are awesome. The stories of the lesser known wrestlers, there's a good chapter in there on Lash LA for example, and that was just a great read.
People that you don't really think of just how he, the business and, kindled through while you in. Became a television character and all that. And, stories from Dusty Rhodes and, things about video games and how those came across and the music in WCW and just all parts of the history of the company.
And I think that there's so much there for the readers to, to enjoy, even if you're not, into the finances. Like Dave and I are here, but there's just so many good stories on the history of WCW and then where it went that, I think it's something that would, that any reader would really enjoy.
And I think you did an amazing job with these books and, to just a couple questions for you that on the books itself, with all of the facts that you've uncovered and fact is the key word here. Have you heard any. The people out there that have previously quoted these false numbers for years and years, have any of these people actually come in and been like,
I'm off mute.
I was wrong. Am I off mute? Yeah. Oh, shoot. I gotcha. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah I know who
you're talking about. Yeah. Has anybody been like, I was wrong and, guys got all this right information here and the narrative should change. Has anybody done that?
David, it's the funniest thing.
The same pattern is happening with this book has happened with the first book, which is, just to be blunt about it, the book is. Reaching a lot of people and doing very well without any coverage whatsoever. And I'm very grateful, for you guys to, for having me on. And I was able to have a conversation with Eric and Conrad as well, and one or two other places, but the exact same thing happened in the first book.
But it was entertaining to me because that book was like a bestseller on Amazon for two or three years, but I suppose in certain circles you would never even know it. So you have a book and just take me out of it. It's let's just talk about the book, right? You have a book where you've got Jamie Kelner for the first time is commenting on the w cw cancellation.
For example, you have Harvey Schiller talking about a secret meeting he had with Vince McMahon at the height of the Monday Night Wars, where he was talking to Vince about, Hey, can we sort something out here for you to combine these companies, right? And this is not when WCW was. Tanking and falling apart.
This is in the, at the height of the Monday Night Wars. The book goes into that detail, for example. You have, many untold stories and many new wrinkles and. What happened was, thankfully, and I've gotta say thank you to anyone listening to us who read either or both of the books, the readers really spread the word and through word of mouth, they said to other wrestling fans, you have to read this book because it's not just gonna be, oh, it's w cw, the Monday Night Wars.
There's the same story you've heard a million times, before's, a lot of new stuff here. And so to be honest, David, I find it a little entertaining because it's like you have this dichotomy taking place where it's like in a cer in a certain in certain quarters. It's like the books never even happened, but yet they're probably like the highest selling or one of the highest selling wrestling books of the last 10 years.
That's my general comment on it. I know what you're referring to, but it's don't worry guy.
We'll handle that when you're not here. There are people that out there, as David alluded to, and he is laughing right now. Don't confuse me with the truth.
Yeah. But we are all about truth. David?
Yes, sir. Yes sir. Got it. Is there anyone you know since another 700 page book, is there anybody that you wish that you, is there anybody that you wish you got to interview that you weren't able to interview?
Yeah, the Coda GRA would've been Ted, obviously, I was told by a number of people who were very close to him when I was doing the first book, this is just before some of his health struggles were made public and so forth.
And, I was told that was probably a non-starter. I was able to get a statement. From his office for the book, which I was really happy to include. And, spent a lot of time talking to a guy by the name of Bill Burke, who was, very close to Ted and a number of people who were close to Ted.
But I would say I was able to gain a lot of I insight from Bill particularly. He actually wrote Ted's, second autobiography and was a real big deal in that corporation. He ran the TBS network. I was able to clean a lot from conversations with him about, Ted's mindset and how he saw wrestling and how it functioned in that corporation.
But to answer your question, you know what would've been great to have some comments from Ted himself as well. Maybe if I had embarked on this, five or six years sooner, he would've been in a position to do that. But I've still heard through other people some things about Ted over the years.
I, I had a conversation with Stuart Snyder for this book. And of course he was the person who represented the WF essentially in the purchase of WCW. And I know that he, still has contact with Ted and the family. I've been able to glean some stuff from those conversations.
But, other than that, I think I was fortunate to, to get to most people. I wanted to.
Was there any talent you wish you would have been able to interview a Hogan or a Flare, or did you think that Yeah, they would added a whole lot because of the car. What they had known is real question.
And let's be honest, a lot of people, especially people from that era, they're going to push the narrative, aren't they?
Yeah. So I would say, and again, you guys and Dave you've been doing this, so well, so long, you know this much better than I, we've mentioned the word grain of salt before.
I certainly found that to be the case when, and I'm thankful to all of the talent who gave me their time, but obviously you have to try to be critical about what they're saying. There, there are times as well though, I will say that, it does serve a useful role in terms of relaying what a talent has to say about a particular event.
It doesn't necessarily mean you're endorsing what they say, but you're presenting it to the reader and saying, this thing happened, this person was involved and here's what they have to say about it. And now, we're gonna give you some other perspectives. But there is some value sometimes in terms of, printing those things.
I think about something like, I had the chance to talk to Kevin Nash for the first book, and we talked about, the infamous, finger Poke of Doom. And he giving his defense of, that storyline and also. The decision to end Goldberg streak, which if people remember happened altogether in a very short period of time.
And, he gave his standpoint on it. And my attitude is, okay, I'm gonna include this in the book, and people can make up their own mind as to, to, what what value they attached to that. Either way. So I think sometimes even if you are, hearing things that are debatable or in some cases, people just outright inventing things, you have to trust like the readers are smart enough to, especially if they have a knowledge base about the subject to sort through that kind of stuff.
But you guys are absolutely right. You definitely have to always keep in the back of your mind that there's a, an angle that's there's an agenda. There was I'll never forget, there was one I won't mention the person by name, but there was one former ER that I spoke to and he was talking about.
He was talking about how he was like, the company they booked me to lose in front of 80,000 people at the Georgia Dome. He started saying, he goes, I'll never forget, he's like 80. There's a sold out arena of 80,000 people and they want me to lose this guy in the first match. So I'm saying to myself first of all, WCW never did 80,000 people at the Georgia Dome, right?
So we can have that number, but second of all, let me look up and see if this guy was actually ever on a card at the Georgia Dome. And I found that the guy, this was someone who he wrestled on more of the syndicated programming and maybe like a Saturday night here or there.
The guy was never even on it. So you take something like that and you say, man, if, if I would've included that in the book, I think a lot of people would've been saying like, this doesn't even make any sense. But, that was the tall tale that he had to tell me at that time.
Real, real quick to, to piggyback that. Yeah, Eric Bischoff refers to somebody in my profession as a useful idiot. And by that what you can learn from someone like Georgia Dome guy is he gave you a nugget and then you chase down the whole story. He said, oh, there's something here, and 90% of it isn't true, but the 10% can lead you to other people that will give you the real story.
Yeah. I think, just again, trying to not take everything that you hear as gospel and trying to take a critical view, and that includes by the way the corporate executives, right? Jamie Kelner, we mentioned him, he issues his defense in the book as to why WCW was canceled, and I don't think it's appropriate, in my role as an outsider and as someone who didn't work in that corporation, to then follow up with the paragraph, attacking or defending Jamie Kilner, right?
It's, this is what Jamie Kilner had to say. These are the factual events the programming was canceled on this date. It was announced on this date, and Jamie Kelner was involved. And here's what Jamie Kelner says. Yes, what he said
about it.
And I know some people have, I've heard from some people they've read that and said still hate that he canceled it as a wrestling fan, but it was interesting to hear the reasoning behind it at least.
And there's other people who, you know, still, oh, he's full of shit. He's trying to, make sense of it. Unfortunately, Mr. Ler passed away last year, so there won't be any sort of further comments from him on the issue. But again, I don't have to explain to you, Dave.
There are times where you have to just trust, the reader and trust your audience to to sort through these things for themselves. Otherwise, you're making your story or your book or whatever about you. And it's who cares what a, someone from the UK who was a teenager when these events were happening, who cares?
What he has to say is my approach.
And to your earlier point, Jamie Ner probably didn't. Go through the weeds and see, oh these books are full of shit. He just was a money loser time for it to go, correct. Or he just literally didn't like wrestling or he didn't like wrestling and he is this thing's gonna lose millions of dollars this year.
Time to go. So yes. You're right. It's like people, we live in the Twitterverse where 140 characters tells you the whole story and sadly it works on too many people.
Yeah. And there's so many, I'm sure David probably looked into this when you were looking at those financial chapters.
There's so many interesting elements to that decision. The fact that there was a key provision in the purchase agreement that Fust Media Ventures, which was obviously the Eric Bischoff. Involved group entered into, with a OL Time Warner that stipulated essentially that if at some point in time the wrestling programming was canceled, FUT would have the right to program that time slot for a particular amount of time in the future.
And that was something that, until I started speaking to people on the Turner side, but also people who involved in Fust was not something that was known. And again, when you take into consideration something like that, although obviously I don't endorse the decision that was made, and I wish it never happened.
As a wrestling fan, you say, okay, if I was. Just, a corporate executive who by the way was extremely successful in television. Speaking of Jamie Kelner re reached heights that, most people in that profession would, couldn't dream of reaching if I didn't have any sort of attachment to this form of programming.
And I'm sitting there at my desk and someone tells me, Hey if we cancel this thing, which we don't like at some point down the road, we have to then give up autonomy over primetime television slots to this outside group. You can see where it's alright, you've already told me this is a money, Lisa, you've already told me we wanna rebrand the networks.
You've already told me, you know about the nature of this programming and I'm not really thrilled about wrestling to begin with. And now you're telling me that if if six months down the line we wanna get rid of it, this is gonna happen. And then you add onto that without going too much into the weeds.
They had a specific accounting. Incentive, which meant if they moved within 12 months of that merger, they could maximize their they could maximize the the financial impact of WC W's losses. And that window was only available for a period of 12 months, which we get into why in the book has to do with accounting regulations.
So it's like a full, it's like a full court press. It's like from every angle. We've got an accounting incentive for do this internally. Our networks have been moving in the direction of rebranding. We don't like the programming. The content is an embarrassment. You've told me that it's losing money.
We could give up the control of a time slot if we cancel this thing later down the road. Like, why exactly do we wanna keep this on the air again? So when you take all those factors into consideration, again, it doesn't mean you support the decision, but it's okay, that, that kind of makes sense.
So Guy you've written two books now for on w cw.
You had a great book with Eric Bischoff. I read that. That was fantastic. I know you've done a couple other books, I think with Dave Penzer, is that correct?
Yeah, that's right.
Yep. So what's next for you here? I know that dust is just settled on this, but what's next in the the writing realm or the wrestling realm for you?
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the book with Eric. If I may, that's like an interesting backstory. Because, what happens is as time goes on as you guys know, sometimes things get muddied and timelines get mixed up and the order of events gets moved around and so forth.
But it was really interesting how that came about because I interviewed Eric for the book and I spoke to him for, I don't know, four and a half, five hours or something. He was very generous with his time. Did not have any other contact with him prior to the book coming out. That was the extent of our contact.
So people will see, and again, you know this David, but for those who haven't read that first, that the original Nitro book, as Eric has said, there is an awful lot in that book that he did not enjoy reading about himself. There are stories which are quite embarrassing, I would say at times. There are specific anecdotes that people share both on the w CW side and the corporate side that I'm sure he probably did not wanna see in a book.
There are many people who are critical, of his leadership and the decisions that he made. There are also his supporters who get quoted in the book as well. But I would say, again, to put it in Eric's words, there was a lot of stuff in there he wasn't comfortable to read. Having said that.
What I was, very impressed with, and again, this is having not had any prior relationship with him prior to the book coming out, is that after the book came out, he went on his podcast unprompted to my surprise and everyone else's, and said, man, this was a tough read for me, especially towards the end.
But you gotta go and read this book because this is a fair account and this is what happens. So if this is as close as we're gonna get basically in terms of a book. And obviously I thought that was like, that was pretty commendable because I've been in, in positions where I've had leadership roles in organizations and so on.
And I think, if I'm gonna be totally honest, if someone wrote a book about one of those organizations and there was like a whole bunch of. Anecdotes that didn't reflect well on me, and there were people, tearing me apart. In a span of the book, I'm not really sure that I would say I would encourage people to go and read that book.
I would probably try and downplay it, right? I think that's like a natural human emotion. The fact that he did that, it started us getting in contact. And then ultimately we collaborated on, his second autobiography as you talked about there, David called Grateful, which is talking about, his post WWE years and TNA and all that kind of stuff. And it, to me that's a, an interesting, way that things turned out there. I guess having that rapport based on kind of mutual respect. And again, I'm gonna have a different perspective on that than people who worked with Eric at the time, right?
There's gonna be people still to this day, they'll tell you all kinds of stories and don't have any reason to believe they're not truthful. But by the way about some of the things that went on. But again it does go back to empathy. And if you've ever been in a position where you've had to lead anything, not to mention a, an organization making hundreds of millions of dollars, but if you've had to volunteer as a coach on the weekends, or you've had to have responsibility over three people in the workplace, you'll see that, having any kind of pressure, any kind of responsibility, having, things being on your shoulders. It does change a person and it does impact your behavior. And the same thing is true for anyone. And so I've always tried to look at it from that standpoint as well. But but anyway, it's just quite interesting.
If you go back to the start and you read that first book and then you see the book that we collaborated on, I think that's an interesting journey in and of itself. But in terms of, what's next definitely got things in the pipeline currently as we speak. I try not to, I'm not like the biggest social media guys, so I'm not gonna go on Twitter and tell everyone what I'm doing or whatever.
But I'll just say, if people enjoy these books, they'll, there'll definitely be more to come that I can tell you.
I hope when they're out you'll come back and join us and we can talk about them with you here because, Oh, I'd love to, I think I'm speaking for David for sure when I say this has been fascinating for us, and I know absolutely.
You gave us an hour and we're probably at an hour and a half right now. Yes
sir.
Do you have anything to close with David? 'cause if not, I am gonna piggyback something you said earlier, and this is why David and I are symbiotic, so go ahead and then I'll put you over my friend.
Yeah, just guy again not blowing smoke and especially, I, it, I think it's totally just that the work you've done on these books is incredible.
I think it speaks volumes to your character that you have literally 15 page autobi b. Detailing, down to the level of detail of how you've ascertained all of these facts. Obviously you're doing good work since you quoted PW Insider on several of the articles there.
Hope I didn't write them.
Hope I didn't write them.
No, it, Mike good. Oh good. But I think it, it's incredible that, this passion project that, that you did ultimately turned into, subsequent books and a four episode TV series. That's incredible how many authors actually write a book that get turned into TV shows.
That's a dream for so many of you. So I think that what you've done is amazing and, I'm grateful that you took the time to, to speak with us and hopefully again, as Dave said, we can do it.
I really appreciate the kind words, David, and much kudos and respect to you guys as well.
If you were to put together, the cumulatively the amount of reporting that's been done on your website over the years and the stories you've broke and the analysis and so forth. You've been doing it in real time, which I will say is a totally different kettle of fish than going back and look at looking at something from a retrospective standpoint, to actually have the ability to make calls and to, predict certain things or to provide your input while things are happening and stick your neck out on the line and, I would argue just risking your reputation, on a continuous basis when you do that and to have the staying power.
I just wanna give that respect back to you guys. 'cause I remember being on the internet in I don't know, the nineties and, there's an awful lot of people who were covering wrestling and writing about wrestling that definitely didn't have that same staying power. I think, again, much respect to you and I think all of it just comes from not wanting to waste the reader's time and understanding that a lot has been said about these subjects in the past, but at the same time, there's an opportunity.
Because I think a lot of it has been somewhat surface level and without the input of the people who are actually there. So my mindset has al always been, let me respect the time of the reader or the listener. The first book is on audiobook. This one will be on audiobook very shortly.
There's, god knows, there's innumerable things that we could be doing with our time in today's entertainment landscape. So it's if you're gonna invest the time to read one of these books, I want you to have the same mindset that you did, David, to look at the bibliography and say that, there's a lot of work and a lot of new stuff that, that came out of this.
And so yeah, I just, I give all praise to the people who actually supported the books because they were the ones who really spread the word about it to begin with, and that's how it got turned into a show quite honestly.
All right, now I'm gonna do the big close, as I said earlier. My man, David said something that I totally concur with.
'cause we're symbiotic. We're like yin and yang. I am not a big book reader either, but I am Tantalized after listening to the Nuggets you've dropped so that I can have the whole dinner. So Guy, one more time for those listening At home or on the road or on their Walkman or, oh, Walkman, yeah. Old. Please one more time.
Tell them how they can get their hands on your book.
All right, I appreciate that. So the new book is called Beyond Nitro Untold Stories from the WCW Era. And as David mentioned, we talked a lot about the financial stuff that's just, but a piece of the book that's a couple of chapters. The book is nearly 700 pages long.
It's 200,000 words. The first book was 180,000 words. So if you're looking to really get into something that will entertain you for a long period of time, and you'll have the inclination hopefully to go back and revisit it multiple times, as I know a lot of people do with these books, you definitely need to check it out.
It's called Beyond Nitro Untold Stories from the w CW era. There's two places you can get it, and this is anywhere in the world, by the way, Amazon or guy evans books.com. If you do order from guy evans books.com, there's an option to have, the book signed if you'd like that. There's also some different bundles on the websites and things on the website and things of that nature.
And as I mentioned, probably in the next six to eight weeks beyond Nitro will be up on Audible, the first book, which is called Nitro, the Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's. WCW is already up on Audible and Amazon Guy Evan's books as well. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please check it out and I really look forward to hopefully connecting with you guys again.
Oh, you'll be back. Trust me, when you have something else, you'll be back and you'll be with the two of us. So again, thank you for your time. Thank you for your hard work because as we mentioned earlier in my world. There aren't a lot of use. I appreciate everything you said about Mike and myself and the work we do here, but in my world, there's not a lot of people like you.
There's a lot of people that have written books and there's a lot of people that shouldn't have written books, and you're not one of them, my friend. So thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it, and we'll have you back next time. Thank you.
Thank you guys. Awesome. Thank you.
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