Controversy Creates Cash (37 page)

People on the periphery of the wrestling business took that as

“Eric Bischoff aspiring to be a Hollywood guy.” That’s not true. Eric Bischoff aspired to be a better performer and encouraged others to do the same.

At some point Sting came to me and told me his acting coach had a small production company. “We want to do an independent feature called
The Real Reason (Men Commit Crimes),
” he said. “Would you”—

meaning WCW and Turner Broadcasting—“underwrite it and fund it?” It was a very small budget. Sting was someone who, relatively speaking, was underpaid at WCW. But he never asked for more money, never asked to renegotiate his contract. He always lived up to his contract and did it with a real positive attitude. So I took the TOO MUCH

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proposal to Harvey Schiller, and I said, “Look, here’s a guy who’s been with the company through the good times and the bad times.

Everybody else at his level is making significantly more money than he is, just because of timing issues with his contract. He’s got a great attitude, and he’s not asking for a raise. But he is asking for some support. Is it worth it to give him some support?” Harvey agreed that it was.

The movie came out at the end of 1998, and I was listed as executive producer. It wasn’t part of a move by WCW or myself to branch out into movies, though some writers claimed it was. If anything, it could be considered as bonus compensation to a guy who truly deserved it.

Head to Head

Hogan and Goldberg

I was getting onto an entrance ramp in Marina Del Rey one day that summer, on my way to the Los Angeles International Airport, when I got a call from Hulk Hogan. We were fighting
Raw
head-to-head, and had a major event coming up at the beginning of July at the Georgia Dome.

“Brother, I know what to do.”

“What is it, Hulkster?”

“Put me in a match with Goldberg. Let him beat me for the title.” I went,
Whoa.
It was completely out of left field.

When I hung up the phone, I thought to myself, What’s this going to cost me? I thought it was one of those moves where I’d get a call from Hulk’s attorney twenty minutes later: “Well, if you’re going to do that, you have to write him a check.” It didn’t end up costing me anything. And the match was one of the highlights of 1998 and still remains a contest that wrestling fans like to talk about.

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Goldberg was on fire, riding his incredible unbeaten string. His victory over Hogan solidified his status as one of the top wrestlers in the game. The tremendous audience response helped Hogan as well, but WCW was the main beneficiary, with a healthy boost in the ratings and a victory that night head-to-head with
Raw.

The match was definitely Pay-Per-View quality, but we’d put Pay-Per-View quality matches on free TV before. We felt it was okay to blow things up on television, giving them away for free, because by doing that we would build our audience over the long term, getting more people to sample the program. And in this case, it helped build Bill Goldberg’s career in front of the largest possible audience.

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Of course, I was criticized in the dirtsheets. But at that point if they criticized me, it usually convinced me that I was doing the right thing.

Jay Leno

Shortly after the Hogan-Goldberg match, I was up at my ranch in Cody, Wyoming, hosting a family reunion when I got a message that a Gary Consadine of NBC had called. He was an executive producer at
The Tonight Show,
and the message indicated he was interested in doing something with Jay Leno and WCW.

I assumed they wanted one of the wrestlers on the show. I turned it over to our PR department and went on with the family gathering. A day or two later, I got another call from my office, saying, “No, no, no. Gary wants to talk to you. He wants to do something with Jay wrestling in the ring.” I didn’t have any idea what they wanted to do, or what I might be interested in, but I liked it immediately. It was a great opportunity. I went right out to L.A. and talked to Gary and Jay. It was clear from the get-go that they were wide open.

I came up with an idea that called for Leno to make fun of Hogan in his monologue. He’d do it one night, then the next, and then the next. Just rip on Hogan. On the third night, Hogan and I would come out of the crowd and threaten to kick his ass. From that point, a Pay-Per-View grudge match would be a foregone conclusion.

Leno loved it.

We did the bit at the end of the month. Hogan and I came down through the audience and jumped up on the stage. We didn’t inform a lot of people in advance, including the security guards, who at first were more than a little concerned. I’d told Jay that we had to make it feel real, and he kept it as serious and as real as it could possibly be. We had a yelling and shoving match, then threw Jay and Kevin Eubanks off the set.

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I walked around and sat down behind Jay’s desk, put my feet up on Leno’s desk, and introduced my guest for the evening, Hollywood Hogan. We had our own little interview, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. It was a great way to launch the angle.

Ripping Off Leno

Over the next few weeks, Jay faxed his Friday-night monologue to me, and I repeated it on
Nitro,
usually word for word. I even built a set that looked just like the
Tonight Show
set. I tried to pretend I was the funniest son of a bitch on the planet. He got pissed off that I was stealing his jokes, and the war of words escalated into a tag team match between Hogan and myself and Jay and Diamond Dallas Page at Sturgis that August.

I picked Diamond Dallas Page for the match for a couple of reasons. For one, the angle was sheer entertainment. I didn’t want to pair Leno up with a Sting or Ric Flair or Bret Hart or Goldberg; I

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didn’t want their credibility to be diminished. Page was at a point in his career where that kind of a rub with Leno and Hogan would only help him, and the entertainment-only nature of the event wouldn’t hurt him.

As much as it will hurt Page’s feelings when he reads this, I never saw him as a guy who would wear the championship title and lead the company for long periods of time. For a short period, yes, but he wasn’t a Sting or a Ric Flair in terms of status.

But at the same time, I knew Page would put a lot of time in and do whatever he had to to make Leno look good. Page had a tremendous work ethic, and a great deal of ability.

We all rehearsed the match for a little over a week before the Pay-Per-View. We set up a ring not far from the
Tonight Show
and worked out every day after Jay finished with his show. Jay worked really hard. He was very committed and took it seriously. He wasn’t necessarily the most athletic person you’ll ever meet, but he didn’t let that stop him. He was head and shoulders above all the celebrities I’ve worked with, except maybe Karl Malone and Kevin Greene, in terms of attitude and professionalism.

The match was designed to showcase Jay, and it did. Page bounced around the ring, and his athleticism and skill made us all look good. It was a great event from an entertainment and brand point of view. Not surprisingly, the hard-core audience panned the event.

Jay kicked my ass good, but by that time everybody was kicking my ass.

Communicating

At the Sturgis Pay-Per-View in 1998, Hogan and Kevin Nash got into a discussion about the direction of WCW. Kevin felt that Hogan was using too much influence, negatively affecting some of the storylines and the other wrestlers. Hogan felt that Kevin and Scott Hall had their own agendas that were not in the best interests 288

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

of anyone else. And by the way, both of those views were shared by a lot of the other wrestlers.

Rather than backstabbing each other, which was the case with so many wrestlers, Kevin and Hogan said, “Okay, we have a problem.

Let’s hash it out.”

There were reports later that they had an argument. I was thirty feet away. It was about as calm and rational as any discussion I’ve seen any two people have.

I was glad. I wanted them to be honest with each other. If they could be honest with each other, I believed they could begin to trust each other. And if they could trust each other, many of the problems they had with each other would probably go away.

The problem with people in general is that when they’re not communicating, there are problems. That was the big issue there.

Nash and Hall had their sphere of influence and core of support among the wrestlers. Hogan had his own core of support. It was important that they work out their issues. Their talk had a positive effect on the company. It became easier to move storylines forward.

And I wasn’t hearing both sides bitching about the other.

The Beginning of the End

Bullshit

The most important thing that happened during the run up to the Sturgis Pay-Per-View had nothing to do with Jay Leno. It had to do with his monologues.

One Tuesday morning after a
Nitro,
I got into the office and found a note on my desk directing me to attend a meeting over at Techwood, the original campus of Turner Broadcasting. I went right over and found myself in a room with a dozen people, most of whom I’d never seen before. I sat down, and they proceeded to tell me how WCW was going to be positioned from that point forward.

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The first thing I thought was that someone was playing an elaborate joke. But it just kept going on, and getting stranger as it went.

Standards and Practices?

One woman stood up and introduced herself as Terri Tingle. She was the head of standards and practices.

While I had heard the term used before and knew what it meant, I had no idea why she was talking to me. No one in the history of WCW had ever interfaced with a department called standards and practices.

She proceeded to tell me that the Jay Leno jokes were no longer appropriate.

Now in retrospect, it occurs to me that the political jokes in the monologues may have been what caused the trouble. This was July 1998, at the height—or depth—of the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Everybody was making fun of Bill Clinton, including Jay Leno. It was no secret that that Time Warner was filled with Democrats, and it may have been part of the issue. I would get “very persuasive” e-mails any time my “voluntary” contribution—which was “suggested” based on a percentage of my salary—to the Turner Political Action Contribution was late. But at the time all I could think of was the fact that I was telling jokes that were suitable for broadcast television. You would think that if it was okay for NBC, it would be okay for cable.

In my gut, I knew this was
way, way
upside down.

The Way the World Really Is

Not only did Tingle tell me what jokes I could use, she proceeded to tell me that from that point forward, I was to give her all of the scripts for my shows two or three weeks in advance so that she would have time to review them prior to their airing.

No way, I told her. Number one, we didn’t use scripts per se.

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“We have outlines and formats with bullet points and production directions. This isn’t
Gone with the Friggin’ Wind.
” You have to understand where my head was at. I was thinking,
Well, this is bullshit. I’m just going to stand up and jump up and down
on people’s chests until they decide they don’t want to do this anymore.

I’ll force the issue, and we’ll sit down in front of Ted and figure this
mess out.

Little did I know that Ted Turner was losing control of his own company.

We kept going. I ripped them apart, one by one. They told me what I should do, and I told them what I thought of their suggestions. Finally a guy at the end of the table—it’s a small world, so I’ll say I’ve forgotten his name—stood up and said: “Here’s how we’re going to position WCW in the advertising community.” Now remember, WCW had no control over how its advertising was sold. Ad sales were handled by the Turner advertising department, and it was completely out of our hands. That was bad enough. Now they apparently felt that since they were selling the ads, they had a right to tell me what the show would be.