Original subtitles

[Eric] In the early 90s,

we couldn't attract an audience.

I needed people to take WCW seriously.

We needed a star.

[Commentary] Hulk Hogan is here!

[Hogan] You can call this the New World Order

of wrestling, brother!

I don't think I'd ever seen anything as hot as NWO.

They were bad, but they were cool.

It was the biggest turn in the history of wrestling!

Oh, no!

Whap!

[Bret] WCW is now beating WWF in the ratings.

Have we created a monster, or what?

Shit's gonna hit the fan at some point, and it did.

[Bret] It was a company that was infested with guys

that had their own agenda.

Eric Bischoff, he was just a prop.

And Hulk Hogan was the puppet master.

Once a god...

always a god!

[Overlapping voices]

You cannot sweep this under the rug!

...this is a fucking television show.

...and I don't understand what he's doing.

The real reason men commit lies...

♪

[Flatlining extended beep]

♪ [Dramatic instrumental] ♪

Ladies and gentlemen!

You are tuned in to the world's #1

professional wrestling program!

By 1997, we had built

so much good will with the audience,

as a result of the NWO.

We were absolutely on fire.

NWO!

When it rains!

It pours!

For 83 weeks straight,

WCW Nitro defeated WWE.

And then, all of a sudden, boom.

[Thunder]

[Phone ringing]

I get a phone call.

[Phone ringing]

It's Harvey Schiller.

He's the president of Turner Sports, and by proxy,

you could say, WCW.

So, I answered it: "Hey, Harvey!

How you doing?"

"I'm good. How are you?"

I said, "Oh, I'm good." "Before you hang up,

I want to let you know, Nitro is having

so much success on TNT,

Ted wants to do another prime time show for TBS."

Feel the Thunder.

Only on the Superstation.

I hung up the phone, I thought,

this can't be real.

They weren't happy enough

with the ratings they had.

They wanted to expand, not realizing

you're gonna weaken the Monday show.

[Eric] I mean, things were going so well.

You're giving them such a great show on Monday night

that the idea of doing another show, live,

48 hours after I just got done producing one?

It...

there was no way I thought it could work.

But, I didn't want to be the guy to tell Ted "no".

That was my mistake.

Tonight, we welcome you to Thunder!

TBS said, "Sure, we'll take the show.

We just don't have it in our budget.

We can't pay for it." So, reluctantly,

of course it was a big part of WCW's budget.

That's what Ted wants.

The challenge

right off the bat, audience fatigue,

because now they're seeing too much of the same talent.

-Who's who? -I don't know!

Even though we had a very deep roster,

if we're going to do another show, I thought,

that roster has to be substantially unique.

It's why I brought Bret Hart in.

[Cheering]

Bret! [Echoing]

♪

I was at the top of the heap of the WWF during those days.

♪

I beat Undertaker for the title.

I beat Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Agh!

I was a WWF guy, and ah, I think I was

a big part of the success that they had.

[Cheering]

I like Bret. A lot of respect for that man.

Bret Hart, somebody I probably had

my best matches with.

Oh!

Ultimate respect.

I loved Bret Hart.

He was like a national hero in Canada.

People respected him, people looked up to him.

I emulated some of my style from Bret Hart,

like my suplex.

Bischoff says, "What's it gonna take for

you to come to WCW?"

Bret...

We got it up to 2.8 million a year.

Bret...

So I joined WCW.

Bret 'The Hitman' Hart!

Has arrived!

First night I walked out, and I got a great reaction.

[Cheering]

I needed an anchor for that show.

Bret was critical to that.

But it went downhill from there.

[Booing]

It sounds to me like you people are

a little disappointed in me.

They're flying me down from Calgary,

then they tell me I'm off for the night.

The next week, I'd do the same thing again.

Just sit in the dressing room and do nothing.

Eric, he apologized to me many times, and said,

"I'm so sorry about how we brought you in."

Everything he ever said was a lie.

We already knew that we were running thin.

You had Monday Night Nitro, and then you had

two days that you had to do house shows.

That's followed by a two-hour Thunder.

We had a Saturday show.

[Janie] And then you might have a Pay Per View

or something in there.

[Kevin Nash] You're basically booking

ten hours in two days.

It was impossible to have any kind of attention to detail.

And I think it showed.

I've never seen a human being do anything

like this in my life!

This has never been done in our sport!

There were so many times we didn't have

finishes for this or finishes for that

because it was so time consuming.

We're out of time!

When these guys are trying to think up something new,

they're gonna go to something

that worked before.

[Eric] You know, NWO was still rocking and rolling.

Printing money, and printing ratings.

And as a result, we took the easy way out.

We kept adding to the NWO.

Let's create the Red Faction.

We got some new colors going on!

[Eric] Let's create the Latino Faction.

The Latino World Order.

You just can't pass t-shirts out and

water down the greatest show in town.

You gotta wear that?

There were too many people. It wasn't cool anymore.

[Bret] If you watched one match...

you watched 'em all.

Every show ends with a run in,

there's about 20 guys running in there.

And I'm going, "And why am I running in?"

Nothing made sense from one week to the next.

And the fans disgusted, thumbs down.

Unbelievable!

[Eric] Creating momentum is really, really hard.

The only thing harder than creating momentum

is maintaining momentum.

Thanks for having me here, Mr. President Elect.

We'd lost our momentum.

And we found ourselves in a rebuild mode.

[Guy] April 13th of 1998,

something significant happened,

which was Raw beating Nitro for the first time

in the ratings for 22 months.

Whenever you're leading a night,

and now you're not leading a night,

there's reason for concern.

As WCW and Monday Nitro

became a huge prime time hit,

those numbers exploded because

it wasn't just men 18 to 34.

It now became families.

So, my eye was on Goldberg.

♪

[Faint chanting] Goldberg! Goldberg!

I was born with something.

[Chanting] Goldberg!

I'm fucking 6'3, 280 lbs.

I could go from 0 to 100, and 100 to 0,

in 60 seconds.

But what the business didn't have was something

that I wanted to fill the void with.

And that's the beauty of the character that

we came up with.

I am the fucking character.

I am Goldberg.

[Grunting & growling]

[Indistinct commentary] ...evolution of man!

We have reached the epitome!

[Eric] I don't think there ever had been

an athlete...

The man!

[Eric] A star...

Superman, himself!

[Eric] A performer...

100% adrenaline!

[Eric] In professional wrestling...

Goldberg will not be intimidated!

[Eric] ...that rose as quickly

as Goldberg.

[Chanting] Goldberg! Goldberg!

Bill Goldberg, he was on a rocket ship from day one.

[Loud popping]

♪

A "professional wrestler" was never

anything I aspired to be.

My entire life existence was to play football.

I don't know if you know who this guy is,

but I've got the picture.

I know all about him- Bill Goldberg,

former Georgia Bulldog and Atlanta Falcon.

I was never the best football player,

by any stretch of the imagination.

I got hurt, tore my abdomen

off of my pelvis in '94.

I had no idea what I was gonna do with

the rest of my life.

I was depressed as shit.

When I finally seriously considered becoming a

professional wrestler, I had to come up with

something where I felt as though I was

continually building upon what I had built.

You strive to be the biggest, baddest dude

on the field.

I gave him the short black boots.

Black tights...

Combination slam, 1, 2...

3!

He didn't talk.

You absolutely manhandled him tonight!

Sir, I've gotta get a little bit more than that.

Mike Tyson- black boots.

Black shorts.

Didn't need to talk, just come down and do that.

[Bill] He might bite your fuckin' ear off.

Or he might knock you out with an uppercut.

You don't know what's gonna happen.

Hey, you gotta watch this guy, Goldberg.

He's a time bomb just ready to explode.

Maybe that's why it worked.

The crowd was reacting to him like a superstar.

Listen to this reception- [Roaring cheering]

It's like, holy crap.

[Cheering]

Oh, my god! 1, 2, 3!

[Match bell chiming]

People were chanting his name,

"Goldberg! Goldberg!"

[Chanting] Goldberg!

They pushed him like crazy.

There's never been a push anything like it anywhere.

Let's just put him out there and have him squash people.

Kept doing it, and doing it, and doing it,

and people kept loving it, loving it, loving it.

Ah!

And why would you mess with that?

Agh!

There were a lot of people jealous of him.

Ah! He speared Nash!

Bill was a fan, Bill was a mark,

Bill was a football player.

Someone should 'a taught him,

or pulled him aside, and said, "Hey, Bill,

you do know that this is pretend, right?"

Agh!

He didn't.

This is a fucking television show!

I know when you tackle somebody,

you think it's real.

But the person getting fucking potatoed

in the corner's had enough.

I feel bad about it.

But, as long as the intent is not there...

it's not my fault. You can't blame me.

Jesus Christ, dude, like, get some skills.

A lot of jealousy.

This guy hasn't paid his dues,

and Goldberg doesn't love this like we do, you know.

They can all kiss my ass.

I'll take that criticism on the way up because

I'm still that guy.

And you guys tried every frickin' thing

you could do for me not to be that guy.

And who prevailed?

[Clicking tongue]

Please welcome... Goldberg!

[Cheering]

[Brad] I felt that Goldberg was really...

the phenomena that could bring advertisers and

all the other stuff that they're buying,

or they're consuming.

Nash and Goldberg Bashin Brawlers!

The kids loved Goldberg.

They loved that character.

And they loved the fact that he was undefeated.

All anyone ever wanted to talk about was

Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg.

[Eric] So, I'm in LA one day.

And, I get a phone call from Hulk.

"I got an idea.

I'm gonna wrestle Goldberg at the Georgia Dome.

I'm gonna put him over, clean.

The time is right. This is the time.

Let's do this."

Nitro! It's on the air!

From the professional wrestling capital

of the world, Atlanta, Georgia!

Bill Goldberg was a hometown hero.

There he is, and here comes the eruption.

[Cheering] Bigger than before!

Guys from the Falcons were there.

You know, former teammates. It felt like the Super Bowl.

I mean, we sold out the Georgia Dome.

44,000 tickets, man.

That place was packed. It was electric.

It was Nitro.

This is the biggest one,

that heightened sense of anticipation.

Let the match begin!

[Eric] 10 million people in the United States between

Monday Night Raw and Nitro

were zeroed in on professional wrestling.

Mind blowing.

That really was...

the height of WCW.

Oh! Hell, yeah!

That was the coolest shit ever.

The feeling that I got when I heard the crowd

after I received the belt...

Thank you! Thank you!

We've got a new heavyweight champion

of the world!

Nothing like it.

It was just the coolest moment.

♪

Okay, why is this not on a Pay Per View?

It's like, man, we could've made a lot more money,

if we'd 'a kept it off TV for a while.

One of the things that I was criticized for was that I was

putting Pay Per View quality matches on free TV.

WCW is getting higher ratings than

anything else in the company.

This is, this is the hottest product we've got.

It didn't always advertise in the highest value that

you could get for ad dollars.

The disconnect between

the advertising dollars, and, and

the size of the audience for wrestling

became an issue.

One of the forces working against...

ad revenue was our ad people

wouldn't sell wrestling.

They don't like it, they want to get rid of it.

There was such pressure on Eric with opposition

not only at the corporate,

but also the people that reported to him.

I mean, he had no friends.

We're gonna take your paycheck.

We're gonna take your job.

There was always a hint of ulterior motive,

which at the end of the day, could maybe

mean the destruction of your company.

I don't know.

Alright, here we go, ladies and gentlemen!

His debut!

Rocky... Maivia!

Now there's gonna be the man, right there.

In the world of professional wrestling,

any kind of fresh take on something

is challenging to do.

Back then, I was still opening match.

-Unbelievable agility! -[Cheering]

What a way to make your debut!

Before the show ended, I was already back in

my hotel room, watching Nitro.

I just wanted to see where they were doing things

differently and figure out how we could

do something like that.

Or, possibly even better.

♪

When you're getting your ass kicked

week, over week, over week, which was our company,

you're gonna say, "Hey, fuck this.

What do we need to do?"

Welcome to WWF Raw!

WWE's answer to NWO was the Attitude Era.

Suck it! [Cheering]

-Here comes Austin! -Oh, no!

[Indistinct commentary] Okay, here we go!

Okay, first of all, I refer to it as the Nitro Era,

because the Attitude Era was nothing more

than a replication of the Nitro format.

They were going after the same audience that

I recognized as being underserved.

[Cheering]

Okay, we're in a fight.

We've been dominating that fight.

But this guy's coming back.

It wasn't like we were hurting.

They were just getting stronger.

I mean, '98 was a record revenue year.

But, all of a sudden,

none of that mattered anymore.

♪

And it affected WCW in ways that I...

didn't anticipate.

♪

I was introduced to a different kind of

corporate structure, with regard to WCW.

♪

In July of 1998, I was sitting in a meeting...

with 10 or 12 other people

much higher in the food chain than I am,

telling me how I was going to operate WCW,

and change our target demographic that

we had built an entire business upon.

He said, "No, we want kids and families."

What you really need for success is the

people coming in on the outside.

But there was a discussion about, you know,

could they do it without being...

as lewd as WWE.

Oh-ho!

Vince McMahon and the WWE decided, "Let's do...

what Eric's doing, and let's do it better than them."

Oh, my god, he's on fire!

That's exactly what they did.

What a good day for a pimp.

Ted Turner was very strict about things on the show

that could be done.

Vince was quite happy to do all of that.

[Wrestler] We will have less references

to our enormous genitalia.

They took it into the gutter.

Didn't matter. It worked.

They had Jenna Jameson on their show.

Our rebuttal is, we'll give the guy an NWO shirt.

I guess there's a new member now, huh?

Everything you can possibly do to combat WWF,

they're taking away from us.

Shut up, you idiot!

[Eric] We were being mandated to change the nature of

the way we were producing our show.

To go back to doing what we were doing

when we couldn't even be a distant #2...

I had taken the business out of the dumpster and

turned it into a success story.

Now, all of a sudden, Standards & Practices

is about to tell me...

what I can and can't do.

Forget that.

If push comes to shove, I'm just gonna fight all this

until it gets to Ted's desk, and then it's gonna be

me and this guy, and we'll see who wins.

-Like a wrestling match. -[Laughing]

You heard the man, himself, Ted Turner.

When you're winning, and you're the guy,

it's a lot of fun.

And when you're losing, not so much fun.

And it was hard on him at times, man.

You could see it.

Eric was always a really positive person.

Really positive.

And, all of a sudden, it shifted to negative.

Don't show anything unless we tell you to show it!

I found myself fighting with departments of

Turner Broadcasting that I'd never heard of before.

It took a lot out of me.

One afternoon I was in my office,

and I was just out of gas,

and Kevin came into my office.

And he just...

he was having such a hard time banging heads

with everybody on everything.

And Kevin offered, he said, "Boss,

why don't you let someone to take over the book?"

"Temporary, get your feet back underneath you.

Let me take this pressure off of you."

The head booker was the one determining

whether the concepts for each week's show

actually made air or not.

I think it's been fairly well acknowledged

that Kevin Nash, you know,

had been instrumental in being a huge part

of the creative process.

[Eric] There were other people I could have handed it off to,

but I had confidence in Kevin's instincts.

So, that's how it started, I said, "I'll help you."

I should have said, "Let's go to a strip club."

There's a big difference between being

part of a group that throws ideas out...

and being the guy that says, you know,

"I know you don't want to do this,

but this is what you're gonna do."

Especially if you, yourself, are a talent.

It was a bad situation,

but it was the best case scenario.

It's quite simple!

If you don't run with the pack...

you're hunted by it.

[Cheering]

Once you have the monkeys running the zoo,

you're in trouble.

And that's exactly what was happening.

Woo!

He listened to all the guys that didn't have

the best interest of the company in mind.

I don't think that's debatable.

It's not just about being the biggest, strongest.

It's about whose ass they kiss.

Sooner or later, someone will beat Goldberg.

I never had any problem with Bill.

I was happy that he was getting pushed.

But, he's had the belt too long.

He was still really green,

and had no idea what he was doing.

Goldberg hit the post!

Not only is he gonna keep hurting all the wrestlers

that he works with, but he keeps hurting himself.

I'm wrestling Scott Hall,

and I screw a spot up.

Scott Hall went down hard!

And he's laying on the ground,

and he looks up at me, and he goes,

"Yo, man, what are you doing?"

♪

And, my reaction was, "I don't fucking know

what I'm doing."

You're live on television,

you're in front of your fans.

I was scared shitless when I screwed that up

'cause I didn't know what was next.

I didn't know what to do.

If you can't do that, you can't be,

you can't be the fucking top guy.

Showing us a little new twist.

That's when I really realized

there was a lot of shit going on,

and it wasn't all for face value.

...2, 3! [Match bell ringing]

So, that's when I started really smartening up to it.

This document will represent the meeting of

these two men at Starrcade.

And this man- looks him in the ring, look at that.

Oh, doesn't he?

Yeah, I learned the good, bad, and the evil very quickly.

I was jumping in to shark infested waters.

♪

To say the least.

Agh!

Who in the world...

can stop this man?

Common fact...

Wrestling 1-0-1.

Babyface always draws more money

chasing the belt

than having the belt.

Still undefeated here at WCW.

The sultan of slams...

Goldberg.

It was a padded stat.

Who cares?

We gave the people what they wanted.

We gotta take him in a different direction,

in order for him to grow.

[Snorting] I never got tired of watching Mike Tyson

come out and annihilate people.

So, with the right creative,

there's ways to keep things going.

That's what you do.

You chase with the babyface.

And when he fucking gets it,

you take it right fucking back.

Because that's where the money is.

[Scoffing]

[Eric] Kevin was a politician.

There's nobody I've ever met that is a top talent

that is not a politician!

It's a job prerequisite.

Just look at it on the surface.

From a pure physicality point of view.

The way we had built Bill Goldberg up to

be this indestructible man-eating monster,

who on that roster looked like they could possibly

beat that monster?

Ugh!

Goldberg's a move away...

From continuing the streak!

And Kevin Nash, standing at nearly 7 foot, 6'10,

whatever he is- probably at that time

340, 350 lbs...

it was believable.

Hook and...

[Cheering]

Got him! 1, 2...

And he kicked away.

What I needed was somebody

who could tell a story with a finish.

The finish I wanted was beat him, 1, 2, 3,

like the same way he was winning.

Took Nash off of his feet!

Clean.

But they thought that

he needed something more to lose.

[Crackling taser]

[Crowd screaming]

That's one of those tasers the police use!

It's like a stun gun!

[Laughing]

It, no- it was a mistake.

You watch that match back.

When I Power Bomb him...

Oh, no. Wait a minute.

[Cheering]

...Power Bomb!

I'm over as fuck.

Could this be it?

1! 2! 3!

[Match bell ringing] The streak is over!

And we have a new World's Champion!

The streak is over!

Did I like it? Fuck no.

Did I question it? Yeah, everybody questioned it.

But, I don't control that shit.

I go out and I do my job.

I think it was quite clear that there was no real plan

in terms of where does the Goldberg character

go from here?

And so, the follow up left a bad taste

in people's mouths.

I'm gonna try tonight to right the wrongs

that happened at Starrcade.

Me and you, Goldberg!

In Atlanta! For the belt!

[Guy] You have to imagine, being in the audience

on that night...

It's January.

There's an incredible atmosphere.

But at the same time, the taped edition of Raw

was happening on the other station.

There was going to be a title change on that show.

[Commentary] ...right here tonight on Raw!

...The first Nitro of 1999!

It's The Rock!

Mankind! The championship!

Ladies and gentlemen, we set the stage for the biggest

rematch in professional wrestling history!

WCW had to remind viewers that

this is where the real action is.

[Kevin Nash] I say, fuck this.

I'll fight Goldberg again.

But that ends up taking a rather bizarre turn and

devolving into a situation in which

Hollywood Hogan comes back into the mix,

and challenges Nash to a match.

After tonight, when I beat Kevin Nash,

when I retire with the World Heavyweight title,

you can just call me

Hollywood The Big Bad Wolf.

Roo!

We were creating this illusion of a conflict

between Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash.

And we built it up like this was gonna be the match of ages

in the NWO to determine the fate of the organization.

Hogan got to the ring, and he looked all serious.

Kevin Nash came to the ring, he looked like

he wanted to eat Hulk Hogan for lunch.

And they get close together,

they're almost chest to chest, nose to nose.

♪

And then...

[Indistinct crowd chatter]

What was that about?

-1! 2! 3! -What's going on here?

[Cheering & match bell rings]

[Eric] 1, 2, 3, oh, yeah.

It looked like a finish.

But it was contrived by the NWO, right,

to keep the belt in the family.

That's ultimately what it was all about.

We're back in the saddle, baby!

And when that happened...

me and a lot of wrestlers were like,

"What the fuck is this?"

♪

[Eric] Wrestling fans around the world say,

"That's exactly when WCW started to go downhill."

That's dirt cheap material.

You know why people hate that so much?

Beause it got 'em.

Look at the crowd.

They don't know what the fuck they're seeing.

People expected to see something,

and they felt like they got fucked.

WCW had chronic bad finish disease.

Sometimes just a good, clean finish

is the best thing.

That same night, Mick Foley was going to

be wrestling The Rock.

As I often had with Nitro, and became famous for-

giving away their finish, starting my show

two minutes before they started their show.

[Indistinct commentary]

I thought, why not go back to the well and give them

a reason not to watch Rock and Mick?

We understand that Mick Foley,

who wrestled here one time as Cactus Jack,

...is going to win their world title.

That fucking Eric Bischoff.

[Laughing]

He just spoiled the match!

[Laughing] He took a shot.

A big chunk of WCW Nitro's audience went,

"Really? That's going on over there?

I'm going too."

And they left!

[Cheering]

So, it backfired in a huge way.

[Cheering]

Two big moves in one night.

Finger poke of doom, and...

Crapping all over Rock and Mick.

♪

Neither one of them worked very well.

What a way to start the year!

We got a little lucky that night.

We had a great match, me and Mick.

That was a real defining moment.

This feels pretty damn good.

♪

There was- I mean, there was

a lot of mistakes, you know, but...

My check didn't change.

The in-fighting, the jealousy...

who is Eric gonna listen to?

All that started to disintegrate something

that was so cool and hot.

We were our own worst enemies.

It was bad enough that the Turner executives

didn't want us...

we did ourself no favors.

♪

Now, a discussion about cable television programming.

Can I go to wrestling for a second?

[Laughing]

Does it bother you a little bit that

wrestling is so popular?

I didn't know that was the promise of cable.

[Laughing]

Four years ago, I went to a wrestling event,

and as you were going on the highway,

you were basically seeing people in pickup trucks,

you know, going.

A month ago, I went to a WCW Monday Nitro event.

There were 40,000 people.

Sold out in one hour.

And, all I'm seeing are families going.

So...

We're not embarrassed by it at all.

When you're a single organization,

you do one thing, which is...

professional wrestling, it's very different than

when you're a company like Time Warner and you've got

a lot of businesses that have to get sorted out.

You're gonna have people who kind of look at this,

and go, "Is this classy enough for our networks?"

Whoa!

And how is that going to rub off on our brand?

Well, wrestling may be a good product for some, but we are,

after all, the world's leader in news and entertainment.

That was the rationale- we just don't like it.

[Eric] The fact that WCW became successful...

was really frustrating for a lot of people.

It was not part of the plan.

It never was part of the plan!

You know, the average person's going,

"Why would anybody care?" But I'll tell you why.

Because WCW occupied prime time

beachfront property on TNT.

There were a lot of people that wanted that

prime time real estate...

and were frustrated at our success because we got it.

[Brad] There were so many demands from different places.

And, a lot of answering to shareholders

that have expectations.

And, WCW got caught up in that.

The revenue challenges were simple.

One of the goals of Turner Broadcasting was to...

enhance the bottom line of various divisions that

they wanted to hold onto.

Let's take some of their debt,

move it over here.

So, they reallocated the guts out my budget,

so that money could be moved over to other divisions.

It made their bottom line look that much better.

We'll recognize all those earnings at TBS.

And because they do business with WCW,

we're gonna move some of those losses over here,

so WCW's books look a little worse

'cause we want it to go away anyway.

You could've probably made it profitable

if WCW charged a boatload of money

for carrying wrestling to...

TNT and to TBS, but because we wanted

TNT and TBS to be much more profitable...

the license fee we paid- [clearing throat]-

was very low.

And that was, you know, not,

not my decision. Um...

They didn't care if they had to sacrifice WCW.

That's kind of what they wanted to do

all along anyway.

There were people deconstructing WCW

from a budgetary perspective right underneath

everybody else's noses.

♪

The reason it became so successful is what,

in retrospect, looked like bad deals.

The no-cut contracts, creative controls.

And all those things were necessary to

swing the immediate tide over.

Guess you'd like me to sign that, wouldn't you, huh?

Everybody...

was making seven figures, plus.

You see this!

People know how much this guy's getting,

and they want to know why they're not getting as much.

Just drew their money and did nothing.

Oh, you work here?

Oh, you've been collecting money for

a year sitting on your ass.

"Ver-say-se"?

I can only imagine how much money went out.

[Laughing] Like, they got what?

ATM Eric. The inference was...

"Well, Eric has access to Ted Turner's money.

All he needs to do is write a check.

He can hire anybody he wants."

Like I was an ATM machine.

I get to spend...

a billionaire's money!

I got a call from Harvey Schiller.

Harvey said, "Eric, I need you to come up to my office."

Now, Harvey very rarely summoned me to his office.

Essentially, Harvey brought me in to let me know...

that I had been under a forensic investigation

for misuse of funds.

I thought, this can't be real.

Presumably, somebody had

met an executive from Time Warner...

and laid out this crazy story:

"Oh, Eric's just handing out million-dollar contracts,

right and left." But this individual suggested that

the reason I was doing that is because those wrestlers

were giving me a kickback.

So, Harvey proceeded to tell me how this...

forensic investigation proved

that none of that was true.

They wanted to come clean, and also to let me know

it was complete...

bullshit.

That pissed me off.

I didn't quit my job, I wish I would have.

That was the moment that

I quit being loyal to the company.

♪

Fuck them.

[Bret] When I think back on my career,

there will always be a little bitterness

about that time period.

I had so many things left unfinished in my career,

things I wanted to do.

To watch what WCW did with me, it was sad.

♪

They're killing me off on purpose.

And they did.

I've always known...

that sooner or later...

I'd have to step in the ring with Bill Goldberg.

[Cheering]

How do you fight Bill Goldberg?

He's like a gorilla.

Slamming guys right through the mat.

Running them over like a car.

I would pull him aside, and say,

"I want to teach you how to actually not hurt guys."

And, when I walked out to the ring with Bill that night,

and I remember I, like, really looked him in the eye,

and said, "Don't hurt me out there."

"You need to trust me."

And, it all went into one ear, out the other.

I really think Bill just saw me as another...

job guy, and someone that was cannon fodder.

If you're watching that match, Bill goes,

"Watch the kick."

And I'm like, "Watch the kick?"

And I don't understand what he's doing.

Oh! Standing sidekick!

And he kicked me as hard as he could.

You can see me grabbing my neck.

I was concussed.

You should protect yourself.

You knew the kick was coming. Right?

I mean, it was in the deal.

It was never talked about or explained to me: "I do this

move where I kick guys in the head as hard as I can."

Nobody deserves that, but it was a fricking accident.

Complete accident.

No, Bill, that's not an accident.

That's a career-ending injury, you idiot.

I somehow will myself to stand up to be

run over by this imbecile.

[Indistinct shouting & cheering]

It was one of the saddest days of my life,

and I knew my career was over.

He never aspired to do anything else,

other than be that guy. And, I ended that for him.

I've never been so remorseful,

and I have been for years.

But fuck, man, I can't do anything else.

[Bret] Bill Goldberg was not qualified.

But he's our star.

They just...

looked the other way.

When you go through the type of brain injury that

I went through, you're just grateful to be alive.

From the very, very first second that I got here,

I got screwed over, and screwed over,

and screwed over.

It was just such a lousy ending for such a...

a great career.

Ladies and gentlemen, he claims to be the...

It just shows that WCW never really appreciated or

understood the talent that they had.

They dropped the ball with me, and he knows it,

and I know it, and fans know it.

But in the end, Eric Bischoff only can answer to himself.

♪

[Eric] By the summer of '99, I was toast.

I was frustrated, angry,

demoralized... lost hope.

Once you lose that, it's pretty much over,

and that's where I was at.

I was pretty disrespectful, intentionally,

because I always thought I had Ted's support

in my back pocket.

And, I didn't know what was going on with Ted.

So, in October of 1997, the Turner-

Time Warner merger was finalized.

And famously, Ted Turner was not receptive to

the idea at first.

Big, huge company, a lot of money for Dad.

They needed him and he needed them,

but he deluded himself.

He's losing more and more control.

More control goes to the bureaucrats,

more control goes to the executive types.

He couldn't protect Eric.

He couldn't protect anybody at that point.

These fans love you. We want to see more of you!

[Eric] That was the opportunity so many people within

Turner Broadcasting wanted,

and now finally had.

I was out of ammunition, out of everything.

It was several years before I recognized just how much

freedom I had and how unique of an opportunity I had,

that the freedom is what led to WCW being successful.

The time I spent battling internally,

it took the fun out of it for me.

If it wasn't for the NWO and moi...

none of you people would be here tonight!

If I had to reflect back on that snapshot,

summer of '99...

may have been one of the worst periods of my life.

All the way across the board.

September 10th, 1999,

I get up like any other morning.

I'm on my way to work,

and I get a phone call from Harvey.

[Phone ringing]

[Laughing] And, Harvey said, "Eric,

you need to come to my office."

I got to the CNN Center, went up to Harvey's office.

And he said, "Eric, you need to go home."

I said, "Harvey...

I'll get home in a little while,

but I've got a Pay Per View on Sunday."

The WCW Fall Brawl of 1999.

[Cheering]

He said, "Not anymore."

♪

And that's when it dawned on me.

And I'll be honest with you, it was a combination of...

confusion, because it hadn't quite sunk in.

♪

And relief.

♪

I wasn't disappointed.

I didn't fight it.

I was shocked. I was shocked.

How many years head start had Vince had?

And then, he beat him for 83 straight weeks.

I did it... I did it!

Pretty, pretty impressive record.

What do you say about Eric Bischoff?

It's what you call "taking the bull by the horns".

What Eric did was impossible, in spite of the fact that

everybody was against him.

I don't know how he didn't blow his brains out.

This has- [Laughing] This has gotta be the most

terrible circumstances for anybody to work in.

[Eric] I pulled into the driveway...

He walks in the door, and I asked him-

"What are you doing here?"

And I sat down at the kitchen table, and I said,

"I got fired."

I think he was a bit rattled.

She says, "What are you gonna do?"

He got on his plane, you know, threw his stuff

in a bag and flew himself to, to Cody, Wyoming.

The next day I was fishing right up the road from

where I live right now.

♪

The fishing was awesome, by the way.

It was awesome that day.

♪

I'll give Eric his props. At the end of the day,

it was his idea for the NWO.

He did push the luchadores.

He did push Goldberg.

Eric put the pieces of that puzzle together.

And, "Oh, it wasn't his money,"

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He knew what he was doing.

The moves he made by getting Hogan...

Savage, Nash, and the remake of Sting.

There were so many good things he did.

Wait a minute...

I didn't get involved in his world.

I didn't know the intricacies of the soap opera.

Eric knew that.

In those years that we were crushing it,

Eric delivered exactly what I asked him to deliver.

This is where the big boys play, huh?

We ain't here to play.

Hollywood at the helm.

It's the N...W...O!

I mean, no matter what you think about Eric

later down the road, he really was

one of those people that worked his butt off,

he worked hard, and he stayed at it.

And, he was great to work with.

♪

It is my honor and my privilege to introduce you

to the man, Vince Russo!

He's the man behind all the story lines at WWE.

Now we've got him. We've got their genius.

He's using Jeff Jarrett's testicles for punching bags!

His thing was, let's get the audience

that isn't watching wrestling.

It was lots of shock and awe.

It made it not advertiser-friendly.

Eric's boys were not

in tune with what Russo wanted.

I've got plans for you, pal!

Vince Russo, you're going to fucking hell just for that.

I am the boss!

Those guys didn't want to give up their spots.

Yeah! 'Cause we earned our spot.

It's now an end of an era!

This is a television show.

You want to go to a wrestling show, go to a house show.

...I think we're deviating from the script.

What the hell is going on?

That's gonna go down as one of the most

infamous moments in the history of television.

That's why this company's in the damn shape it's in

because of bullshit like this!