Transcript
There's no better time to switch to 48, get old data calls and text for 12 999 a month, and there's no contract, so you're not tied down. Plus, we're powered by three switch and save at 48 880 monthly membership, fair usage policy of 200 gigabytes, 5000 calls and text and terms and conditions apply one time activation fee of 12 99 $48 each. PodcastOne presents the Steve Austin show, classics, heels with heat, baby faces that are over in cash registers that are full of money. I've been kind of following a Fishbone interview and Jim Ross because the guy's got such a damn history in the business. I'm trying to cover the highs and lows and everything in between. Here's what it's all going to boil down to. I always tell you guys exactly like it is. I'm going to have to bring Jim Ross on for some more episodes of the Steve Austin show, because right now I'm going to get off his page right now, and I'm just gonna talk purely wrestling, booking angles, psychology and promoters. Well, Jim Ross. Anyway, without any further ado, Jim, welcome back to the show. Let's talk about Bill Watts and the magic of his booking and his psychology. Well, the first thing, Steve, you know, Cowboy was a great psychologist. He was a big athlete. He headlined the garden. By his third year in the business, Bruno Sammartino took bill under his wing that became tag team partners. The inevitable turn or bill became a villain occurred. They had three main events in a garden, which at that time was very unusual. And so Bill had a bill. Bill got over. And then when he got over in New York, thanks to Bruno, those matches of Bill's promo ability, you know, here's a six three, 300 pound babyface turned heel. Then all the other promoters got word that this big guy's young and just starting the business and he's headlining the garden watch, got bookings and all the major territories of the top guy, right? What is it about, Bill? What's it got him over, man? I mean, when I saw Bill on TV, you know, he was over with me too tough guy told it like it was. Now, of course, I didn't know at the time, but you know, he was booking the place. He owned the territory. So what he said was low and it always went down like he did. But what did he bring to the table back in the day? Because I didn't see, you know what he was doing when he started what enabled him to get out? He was very he was real. He didn't play the role. He was a bully at heart. He was overbearing by nature. He was extremely intelligent. High IQ. He was smarter than you. He was bigger than you. He was tougher than you. And he could prove it in any deal. He could prove it at the boardroom. He could prove it in a, you know, wrestling that he could prove it on the football field. He was a two sport recruited athlete at Oklahoma back in the day when they were raw in the late fifties. He was real in the sense that he was a tough guy, but he brought that to the ring and brought realness to the ring, and he demanded the realness in the ring from the from the guys. If you weren't tough guy legit, you know, then you probably weren't going to make it mid-south very long. And when he got a chance to to buy into McGurk's territory, he got rid of all the the office stooges. He got rid of all the small guys except Hodge, and he sort of bringing in super heavyweights who brought in the spoiler. He brought in big heels. Murdoch. Nick Murdoch was another one. They brought in big heels because Bill was a star. The babyface? He was. He was the he wrote the movie. He produced the movie. He starred in the movie and he was a superhero in his own territory, and he brought his own villains in to work with him hand-picked. And so that's how that all started. That's how I got successful. And the older he got, he wanted. He got, he wanted back out of the ring. And so he he bought the territory and his image, and he still played the same brand of football that he always coached. He coached the same brand he played. What kind of guy was he to work for? Have a bunch of roles or what? Oh, he was a hard ass, and I talked to him a couple of days ago last Sunday. Well, wouldn't it be less sunny now? But the first Sunday in May at a 74th birthday, and he's living down in the panhandle of Florida like a luxury, and he saved his money. And that was one of the things he taught me was, You know, what you make, kid, is what you say. And I know it sounds cliché of how, but its bottom line and the money. Bottom line. The money, then it ain't about what your gross is about what you say, because both you and I both know a lot of guys that made a lot of money that that still a predatory RC bill. They still can't even buy a house because they got our debts. And it's embarrassing and it's sad, but it's the truth. Bill is a different breed of cat in that regard. He said he had annuities. He was. He was a financial planning done and all that stuff I got to be a part of, of learning one at a very, very young age. But he wanted to book the territory and his vision and his belief. He did a lot of patriotic angles that that played easily because they're easy to understand. We had Russians and Germans and Japanese and all these things, and he loved that. And people? People were all, you know, you had to know your audience, you know, you've worked this told you this before. He told me this a million times. You got to know your audience, J.R. Steve, you got to know your audience. And so build understood his audience. It was a it was. It was the southern culture. It was Oklahoma. It was Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Texas, Houston, Beaumont area. And he knew his audience. He knew what they were. They knew they're patriotic. And there they were, this blue collar, some of the guns. And that's the he knew what pushed the right buttons. So he he got a crew together. A tough guy. And he got a crew together, a believable athletic guys. And that had the aptitude for for his teachings. And he still had lots of rules. You know, we did TV in Shreveport. We are mentioned on the last show. Every Wednesday, we did promos, but every other Wednesday we did two hours of TV to one of our shows. Well, there are two primary hotels that the boy stayed at. There was one hotel that had all the babyfaces could stay out if they wanted to, but they couldn't stay anywhere they want as long as wearing heels already checked in. If all the boys stayed got a right at another hotel, which they did back in territory days there were designated either the Hilton Hotel de Paris hotel and there was no intermingling period. Zero. What happened if you intermingle? No intermingling, man. You know, that's that's like the time I left the g*****n gate open on the dog pan am I. My dad's prized point of bird dog gotten heat and one of one of the male parts were a reason I got into the dog pan and bred the mother. She had pups and she had nine puppies and they were inbred and they were selling for $15 apiece for my dad was making about $100 a week. And I ruined the whole crop because I didn't shut the God dang gate. So guess who, 12 years of age got 947 auto sack and handed a hammer and told them to take them to the dump and destroy them? That would be me and dad raised me. There was no intermingling. And that was another lesson learned, you know, to keep your commitments and shut that down gate on the down dog pan. Dr. Phil would have that be a rating sleep week for me on that show. That would be a little stiff. Let's talk about the crew. Talk about a seven hour crew. And he brought out a bunch of tough guys. The business has changed a lot, you know, from today's locker room to that locker room. Obviously, we both still love the business. I don't have an axe to grind about the current crop of superstars. But back in the day, it was all about the real deal. And this is before all the exposés on 2020, the Harold Rivera said John Stiles. How was that locker room at home? Because, you know, a lot of times when you when you come in to get a spot you damn near had to whip our matches hours to get that spot on many occasions. What was it? What was the atmosphere like in those back and what was the atmosphere like in those days with the competitive environment that it was? Because, man, that's what no guaranteed money. I can answer that question with one rule that he had, if you as a wrestler or stupid enough to get into a bar fight and you lost the bar fight, you were fired in the story. There was no compromise. There was no well, let me get a second chance. If you went into a bar, you went into a bar or there was a bunch of drunk alpha males and they want to take on the bowling pro wrestler and you as a wrestler, got your a*s whipped. And in it got out, which it would because, you know, telephone telegraph, fellow wrestler, a wrestler that that had more to gain by leaving would be sure and tell Bill that also got his a*s whipped at the bar in Alexandria, Louisiana. What? And so that guy would be giving us notice, and it might let you move up the card. So the telling on somebody for their indiscretions in that respect was commonplace. So the bottom line over the years is that you better be able to handle yourself if you're going to go into a bar and have a beer. And in the end, the guns are drawn, so to speak. You better be able to shoot first and shoot. That should the most accurate because you lost a fight, you're fired. Who was on the major players back in the day? It was the law of the jungle man. He believe in that, and he didn't believe in guys setting out because they were injured. Healthy Wales got Dr Death got was worked with Brad Armstrong one night and you know, you hear all these wives tales and I was there and I saw it. So I know it's to be true. But that didn't work on a on a on a four and a Brad court document. I with his elbow and he had doc had a hundred and eight stitches put in his eye all around his arm ophthalmologist had to sign up. Well, this will happen on the next night. The boys are booked in Biloxi and all those kind of green. He said, Bill, what do you want me to do tomorrow? And Bill and this doctor doc come back from the emergency room and his iswell shirt had 108 stitches. This is all fact, Joe said. I expect to get your a*s in the car and go to Biloxi tomorrow and keep your booking. You're going to work your advertised. So that was the toughness that was demonstrated in that territory. And, you know, we had a bunch of tough guys. You know, Jay WiDi was more he was a bigger star. Mid-South ever had bar none. But he wasn't somebody you trifle with. He wasn't a you know what, Benny? Highest level of an amateur, but he was a pretty tough, tough guy. But Jim Duggan, let's read Nick Slater. You know, Murdoch, Murdock, Murdoch. Take your head off. Paul Orndorff fight you to drop the hat and the big cat. Ernie Ladd. Nobody, you know people didn't want cross Ernie Ladd. So those are the kind of guys or the nucleus of the Mid-South territory. You know, Jim Duggan, my god. There wasn't no tougher guy Jim Duggan. I just got to Boston over a match. This is putting out a Mid-South DVD in September, and I did about eight hours worth of voiceovers and matches that were taped but never aired on television or a handheld tape. No commentary. So I did all the commentary by myself, and one of the matches was Bust Sawyer against Jim Duggan in a street fight in the downtown municipal auditorium in New Orleans. And I literally thought that I was watching a UFC fight because they beat the s**t out of each other. I mean, it was it was disturbing. It was uncomfortable to call it because I knew what was going on and one hit the other hard. And so the guy who kind of half assed smile and retaliate, you're cutting the receipt or there was a receipt after receipt, f receipt. And that's an illustration of what's going to be on that DVD. But that was Bill's territory. It was physical. You know, if you didn't lay stuff in, you know, it was horrible. It was absolutely. He just didn't last long. So he demanded physicality. He wanted it. The heels got most of the heat, the TVs or heel oriented when you left the air. His goal was to have the fans pissed off and wanting to pay money to see that he'll get his a*s whipped in the live arena. The babyfaces didn't always win, but they never quit. And that's what I tell young guys now as a babyface, you can get over if the people believe in you and you don't quit on them. You learn to sell your head up, you know, like you keep that fight going. And at the end, if you lose a battle, you didn't quit. As long as the fans think you're not a quitter. They probably probably won't give up on you that quick. So that was Bill's whole deal. You lose a fight in the bar, you're out. You know, he didn't get on the babyfaces who were married for not being friendly enough with the female patrons. Right? And you know, they find out what so-and-so had a chance to walk out this bar. And this is the hottest girl at the bar and ticket taker to his room. And he didn't do it. Well, that's. And Bill, two guys a*s out because he didn't follow through with what the babyfaces the heroes are supposed to be doing was making the women happy. He was a strange cat, but that was the old school. But back in that era, Steve, that was that was very unusual for Vanya was the same way Eddie Graham was the same way a lot of those old time from Roy Shire and Frisco. Same way you, you didn't. It didn't intermingle with your opponents the very basis of their extracurricular duties. And he also went to bars and sometimes went the bars to get into a fight to make a little newspaper headline that they had. They got arrested for Beat the Hell Out of Somebody, a truck driver, a biker, whatever. There was a whole different lay of the land, but the world is different. You know, like you said, I'm not knocking them guys today. The kids raised different. Guys are getting in the business in a different way than they used to. So it was. But he was. That was his deal. The Heat, the babyfaces got the they got their their hair, they got the comeuppance at the blow off when you had the final final match, which for us was generally in the Superdome, where WrestleMania is going to be next year, we will run it four years, 30 years. The Superdome has been a site for different wrestle events. That's when the babyface finally prevailed at the end of the journey. And if you step with him as a fan, he didn't quit at the end of the journey. At the last stand on, the chips are down. The hero won the war, and that's the way Bill Watch ran things in the Mid-South territory. We're going to talk more about promoters who was the best, who was a smartass, who was the hardest working right after I take care of a little bit of business. You're listening to another classic episode of the Steve Austin show only PodcastOne. Talking to Jim Ross, my buddy, we're talking here, we're talking baby faces that are over and money. Now we're going to switch over and talk about some promoters who was the best, who is the hardest working, who's the smartest? There's so many of them. And Jim Ross was right there in the heyday of it all. And with the current regime, let's talk about promoters, Jim. You work with Bill Watch. You said he ran the best one hour show there was, but Vince was probably the smartest cat there ever was. Let's break all that down. Well, the thing about it is that every promoter had to take advantage of their demographic and know their audience. And that's why I watch this style of booking in the Wild West aspect of what he did. A lot of blood. A lot of a lot of violence. You know, the there are a lot of people that were, you know, it's not it's not a great image, you know? You know, the we had a lot of Russians when he heat before German anti-Americans. Hell, you look. He'd bring a guy in from Canada and he'd make sure everybody knew this guy was Canadian. And and I don't know that, you know, there's have been a war seen assets in Canada. The biggest issues have been getting to customs. When you go fly in the country are trying to figure out the little coins, you know what they mean those, those blue guys or whatever the hell they are. Bill was the king of the man wrestling show because he told every, every segment and there were six segments to a wrestling hour. That means there's five commercial breaks, and every segment had a beginning, a middle and an end, meaning it had a purpose. There was a he had a G.P.S. for every segment that was a start and a finish line. So every segment had a purpose and every person in that segment had a role, and he would make it clear as to what the role was. I remember Ernie Lab booking the land and there was a grappler who was really a hell of a hand out of Portland, Oregon area came down there and he wanted to make a good impression first night and build a good djawadi on TV that often in the ring, he did promos. He was a promo guy that landed and went in there and wanted to make a good first impression and Blue Dog ate the dog up fatigued and at Wrestle Dog, many look kind of bad. The dog family beat him with his powerslam and Bill was just, you know, I call them Match, and I tried to ignore it because I knew what bills I had to protect the dog, right? But you got to call us on the monitor. That's the only match in all the years I worked for Bill, but never made air. He edited it all. Don't protect the dog, huh? Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, Ernie Lauer was a booker, and he called me and Ernie into the little private office of the Irish Male Boys Club there on the fairgrounds in Shreveport and and Land Denton and Dog. And he said he told Lamb. He said, You're fired, Ernie, you're fired in dog, you're an idiot. And I mean, tell, tell you, look at me, I'll just call what's on the monitor. But I said, pardon better. So he fired everybody, and I thought I was going to be fired to get fired. And of course, by the time a second show is over, Ernie was back as a booker, and Linden kept his job because Ernie be bill to give him another chance. So Lynn went back and we told the fans that Lynn Denton was so different, so angry at dog that the win was a fluke and that was the best of the house. So they had a rematch. But it was of the match goes back in that first show and land it and flew around like a flying Wallenda and made dog look like a, you know, even a Superman. So you're supposed to do in the first place. So Lynn kept this job. Ernie kept his booking job for a few minutes. There they were all fired and I was on double secret probation, so to speak. That's what he was a perfectionist. That one hour there was no filler. There was no there was nothing got funny. It was funny. By being organic or natural, it was nothing set out written to be funny. He was. He was a dramatic. Everything was drama. Everything was drama. You know, I was telling you, go down the phone us and watch us Bates Motel, you know, and it's a psycho drama. Well, then there's not much humor on it, but sometimes things are inadvertently funny. And that's kind of like those wrestling show us. If something was got a laugh, it was inadvertently funny. It was dramatic. It was athletic. It was compelling. That was his mantra. And maybe it was one dimensional. Maybe it wasn't an all encompassing entertainment show, but it was an action adventure. Kick your a*s. Here's why we're fighting situations. So that's where that's where we were. We were on that day with Bill, and all those promoters, though, knew their audience and Bill knew his audience. But you know, nobody can. Host events as far as knowing the whole every aspect of promoting and building entertainment company, and I get this all the time well on Twitter at JRC BQ, by the way, people saying, well, McMahon killed the territories. I say bulls**t to that, and here's why I say that. Not because I'm still working as a consultant and I'm trying to kiss Vince's a*s. I've done that on television, but I was there when the territories were going down the drain. I was watching. I was inside a territory, so this is not hearsay. The the promoters themselves kill their own territories and they did it by not developing any new stars, and they did it by not keeping up with the they wouldn't know anything about a podcast back in those days. I could tell you this when I want to watch and said, I want to do some radio promotions in these markets and get a big radio station in the market to make it, let's say, TLC night. And they would run so many spots and we'd let them do the guest ring announcing. And all of a sudden the houses went crazy. The bill had never bought a radio spot in his life. If you didn't get it off that one hour TV show, there wasn't nothing else that you tell a little story in the paper, and that's it. They didn't use newspaper ads. Maybe a little bitty one. That was it. Anything outside that show was no more than a one or two inch out of paper. So those promoters said, Well, if been watching my show, but I don't come of matches anyway. It was a stupid nearsightedness. So they were repurposing old eyes that were old and protective of their spots or were holding down young talent to go elsewhere or just quit the business. So the old promoters killed their own territories. McMahon was just from our left to see what was going on and take advantage of creating relationships. Well, those local television markets were the more exciting product. Plus, he spent money with them. He bought advertising leave or not. He money, and he's right. He is a newspaper and he used radio. If we promote electronically, he are for murder. So you've got a bunch of 0x wrestlers who want to do things like they always did. That's like for that in the cards. How the hell do you run a market every week and expect that the when the cards are going to do it because you've got to change the one, the cards every three or four days because it's a different show with a different date. It's stupid. So I'm a big believer that the promoters kill their own businesses and not one guy by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of good. Jim Barnett was a good promoter. You know, Barnett ran off Sedalia, but that was a shrewd operator. And, you know, I've always said Barnett should have written a book. He passed away before he had the courage to do it. And I've always thought that either Nathan Lane or that due to trade the gay guy and Donnie Wahlberg movie, the the porn star, Dirk Diggler, whatever the hell that was or the movie that was. Yeah, Boogie Nights. But yeah, Boogie Nights. See, Seymour, what's his name? Philip Seymour? Thomas Hollywood. What's his name? Seymour Thomas. Something like that kind of a hell of an actor. Take Truman Capote. Yeah. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman Yeah, that's a dude. Hot air of books under did work with him. Well, let's talk about talk about a little bit about Eddie Graham down in Florida because I used to hear the damnedest things about how this guy was one of the preeminent fetish guys in the history of the business. What was what was it about him? I'm going to finish. He will make you believe it was real. In reality based, it wasn't a it wasn't a scripted reality show. It was. But you can tell it, and the issues were unearthed could be understood by all demographics, no matter the color of your skin, no matter your gender or no matter your age. You understood what the issues were about. And that's very, very important. Why are you? Why are these two grown men fighting? Why are they angry at each other? What? What's what's that? What's at stake? And then you had gore, too. So are there to do the presentation and make it real? So the angles are all based in reality. And so then the finishes were the same. So it wasn't like some rinky dink. You know, I used to get frustrated watching the talented Lou chadors when WCW was after I left in 93, watching them do all these amazing spots and there'd be somebody with a small package. I'm thinking, You've got to be s**tting me. That's what you got. That's what you're going to. That's what you're going to ended up with. You know, Dean Malenko, go out there and do something really cool and zig zag and get you in some kind of weird a*s. Hold it made sense. But for some of those guys to do all this flipping and flying and her coronas and co-pays and suicide dives and all this other stuff, and then they win the match with a small package made me want to throw up because it didn't fit the story. It wasn't believable. I mean, you just you took everything this guy had to offer and then you lost a small package. I don't get it. You have to help me figure that out. So I believe the building was the bottom line, and Bill got a lot of bill told me that he got his Ph.D. and looking for material. So that speaks volumes. And look at all the guys who went to that Florida territory over the years. That's a territory now that you could start another wrestling company with that group of guys right there and be competitive without question because the talent level attracted the top guys. Now it was good to go to Florida because the weather was nice. We had the beaches, a lot of pretty girls. And you had no state income tax. So Florida was a destination a lot of guys want to get to, but they also want to get there to work with Eddie Murphy. Rhodes learned how to be a booker from Eddie Grant. A lot of guys did. Cowboy was another one, as I mentioned. So Eddie, was this a great finish guy? And so the finish made sense, Steve. It wasn't like, you're going to roll your eyes out. Come on, that's bulls**t. I ain't going to believe that one. You just took me out of my mood right now. You know, you just you hit a bad note in your in your song here. I don't get it. You know, I was like, Johnny Cash doing rap. Wait a minute. I don't want to hear Johnny Cash do rap. I don't hear Johnny Cash to Johnny Cash. Get me in the moment. Don't take me out of the moment. And hey, Graham, never let that happen. Well, let's talk about Vern and you for a little bit and NWA, because seemingly, I mean, very much got in a spot where, you know, he could have. He was a guy that could really compete with Vince had a lot of the key components. Vince recruited some of those components out. Vern lost his footing and went down the drain. But Verne could have been the guy. What did he not do to get him to turn the corner and be able to compete and take the lead? Well, you know, I never worked for Verne. I've not. I met him several times, called him Bill of Partners. When Bill bought Bill Fritz, Von Erich and Vern bought all parts of McGurk's territory because McGurk couldn't get talent. So, but he sold part of his territory to those three guys. Bill in place and Vern and Fritz, both, they're supposed to the talent sharing and that didn't work out. That's like the same theory as somebody saying the wrestlers ought to form a union how they came. If you get 30 wrestlers together, can't even agree on what to order for lunch. Much less have a union and have booze and have structure and going to happen. People need to forget about wrestlers having a union. It's a stupid a*s idea that will never happen. So Verne wouldn't change with the times, in my estimation. And even though Verne developed some of the biggest stars in his camp and have some great talent, flair was developed there. Steamboat was developed there. Sgt. Slaughter, you know, the iron cheek. A lot of real tough has learned their trade and burns camp in Minnesota. But for some reason, when he got to a certain point of his life, he lost that edge of keeping developing new talent, and they kept producing TV and that little studio setting. And it was exciting. And you know what's realized that we had to get out of a studio in Shreveport? We moved our television to Tulsa, to the convention center, was seated, you know, 60000 people. And that's a whole lot different than 100 people in the studio audience. And the same one said in the same place every week. So Verne never really got into the it didn't modernize his business. He didn't keep up with current times. And I think that's what I think. That's what really essentially killed him. And he was reluctant to get guys under contract. Bill did start using contracts toward the end because we lost a bunch of guys to WWF at the time and the guys gave their notice, but they didn't have. Contractually, they're able to give their notice. Tough guys supposed to get six weeks notice and guys underneath two weeks notice, it usually didn't never work out that way. And Vern didn't have a lot of his guys under on paper. So when you're offered opportunity like Hogan was and mean gene and several others in a DWI territory, they went to what they thought the money was going to go and they were right. I mean, the smartest thing Hogan ever did was leave NWA, even though he established his body of work there, which is what led him to come to WWF at the time. So I don't think Verne was one of those old promoters that headstrong alpha male. I ain't changed, and I've always done it this way and the hell with it. And that's the same thing could be said of the bruiser in Indianapolis Bob Gaggle in Kansas City. They just wouldn't change the guys, but they thought their way was the only way. And there ain't no only way. Speaking of change, that's going to take me in my next little Segway. I want to talk about change because that's what Vince has been able to do. We're going to come. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about change with Jim Ross in the restaurant business. And before we do that, check it out. You're listening to another classic episode of the Steve Austin show only PodcastOne. All right, when I left off with Jim Ross, we were talking about being able to change, and one thing that this man has been able to do is change. He's not a stick in the mud, he'll roll with the punches out of the man and out of it. I don't blame them not to say Jim out of the dark ages and into, you know what? The best way to lead into this jam as when our venture would always tell a story. It was when Ted Turner bought the NWA from Crockett, and he calls Vance, and he says, Let's guess what, I'm in the wrestling business and then said, Well, that's fine, Ted, because I'm an entertainment business, and that's the way it was. What's the difference between being in the wrestling business and being in the entertainment business, Jim? Well, I think, you know, you look at the elements that this brought me to tape on a big arenas, always of big crowds. People were drawn to it. Boy, look at all those people. That's very much especially good us watch it. It was then look at what you saw in the old territory days where they would take in the studio because they got their production free. By and large, because they provided an hour of programming. They got a good rating for that station, so the states would trade out an hour of programming for the production car, so the promoters didn't want to get out of their comfort zone. They'd go in a little studio. They had no pyro. They had no extra lighting. They had no music. They had no set. You only saw a few people. It didn't look like it was a great deal. This is unless you're a die hard breast, some fan, you might buy it when you're changing channels. But we did what anybody was watching. I wouldn't buy there. You know, that's like watching it. You have got a big football fan. One thing that will turn me off is what a director of a football game, especially those late night games on Saturday has a shot of a bunch of empty seats for the where there's no crowd there to buy. That takes me out a moment for a little while, you know? And that's why the NFL protects itself because you got stadiums locked down the Dolphins and Miami. They don't sell out. They have a sold out and then they have blackouts. Tampa, another one. They won't let the national audience see if few seats because those games aren't televised and those local markets that you might get them on on satellite. But but if you get one satellite and you want to watch a video that you're watching because you don't care received by there or not, but as far as the national image and protecting that market, they're designed to let that happen. So this type of thing out of smoky little arenas, don't you look in place? He let them up. It used to be. The crowd was not lit. You couldn't see the fans. You only saw the rain. I saw a little bit of the old school variety. I kind of liked that ring have been the focal point. I do like a little bit of light, you know, maybe flown out to the rows back. I don't need to see everything I want. I want the focus on that product in the ring. Yeah. So I think he I think he did that he he ingratiate himself with mainstream entertainment people like a lot of guests that were at WrestleMania one, a lot of mainstream stars because he realized that that would get him mainstream publicity. So he got by using those talents Liberace or Billy Martin or Muhammad Ali or whoever it was, it got it. It made his his promotion cool Cyndi Lauper and the MTV thing and all that stuff. So all of sudden, he created a new image for the genre of wrestling and created that sports entertainment thing. And so I think that he had a vision for what it was going to be. And that's the thing about dance. He's never been afraid to take calculated risk. That's what he calls them. Somebody said, I don't take a chance. They didn't take chances. He took calculated risks. And you heard him use that term a hundred times. And he has a big colonies. He don't, he's not afraid, and he would go out there and try different things. Did everything work? No, it didn't. But that's the art that as every movie, a blockbuster. No, they're not. And there's some damn good directors and stars, and everything else has been in movies that were that belong in the hopper, you know, but that's that's a gamble you take sometimes in the entertainment or in that world. So I just think he had a vision, Steve, of making it brighter and more, you know, more and a better look at their presentation. And, you know, along the way, you can lose your way and take your eye off what happens? Build a bell. I get that. But as far as the presentation and event and the vision, nobody's ever come close to McMahon as far as having a vision for building a brand. And when you're in 160 countries or whatever it is now in 40 50 languages. Who the hell they were? I would have thought that back in the, you know, the 70s, I got in the business now of making those 40 bucks a night and I'm right down the road with that bar. Danny Hodge, who made my $40. I would never realize that somewhere down the road I'd be in South Africa or we'd be in Kuwait, or we'd be in Japan or wherever. I just thought I'd be in Portsmouth, Arkansas, the next day because that was on the territory. So he changed the whole feel for the business and create an opportunity for the guys to make a whole hell of a lot more money. People can b***h about Vince all they want, but a lot of guys we both know, including you and me, have made a hell of a living there. Thanks to him and his vision for what he did with your character and my character and several other guys that we know that we always agree philosophically, we always run the right play. Well, that's always subjective, but nobody compares to him as far as Vision is concerned because he kept up. It's like all the social media stuff I had. I can't stream it and kick it into Twitter because they want me to do it. And so I'm a team player and I said, OK, I'll do. Twitter didn't want to do it. I was hesitant because I was old school didn't understand it. Sometimes what you don't understand as a change you perceive as being negative. And that's not always the case, as we both know. And so now I'm a Twitter fanatic. You know, I've got probably close to 800000 followers, not only on TV all the time anymore, but it's growing. So that's just another example. It's social media stuff. He just stays ahead of the curve. And I think we're going to transition now as far as talent is concerned. A lot of young guys trying to get their foothold. But, you know, maybe another story for another time. But as far as promoters go, he was he was outstanding. You know, Jimmy Crockett wasn't a bad promoter. He just didn't have the funds to be to compete with McMahon. But when you think about Jimmy Crockett and this is going back in a day a little bit, you thinking, man, that was hardcore serious wrestling territory, as was, you know, Mid-South, as was Debbie WWF back in the day and all the transitions it went through. And by and large, any smaller territory in the United States. But when you go back to talking like you were about Bill Watch, and if there was that glimmer of humor that wasn't out, not supposed to be funny, but it just lent itself to the reason to the to the angle because of the timing, then it was cool. But when do you cross the line into letting in too many glimmers of humor? Is that prevalent in today's WWE product? Only if a talent has the chops to pull it off? That's why there's only a handful of big time stand up comedians are filling arenas and not comedy clubs. They're a comedy club. Comedians are a dime a dozen. And the guys, how many comedians are going and doing 5000 seats? 10000 seats? How many comedians are doing a stadium? Well, there's none of those stadiums. So my point is doing comedy is hard. It's a it's an art form, and I have a lot of respect for guys that are able to do great comedy, you know? You and I both are fans of Ron White, Ron Wyden, a pretty successful comedian, but he's one of a handful of guys. Seinfeld could do it when he was travel, and he still does what he wants to do. But there's very comedy's hard to pull off. And when you get an untrained thespian to try to be a comedian. Sometimes it just doesn't work. And there are some guys that are actually better at doing comedy than they are wrestling. And there's a place for those kind of guys. There's a place, those kind of guys, if they're if they're cast in the right role. But I just think comedy's really, really hard to do. And I think that for writers to write comedic material who aren't comedy writers and they think they understand the character of the performer and the performers should be able to see my vision. It's not that easy. The best promos are where you give guys bullet points and you tell them you get x number of minutes or whatever and you say, Circle, they'll do it. And that's what I watch is a great promo guy. It's got great promos, but nothing was ever scripted. He cut things down and you guys a*s out and things like that. If guys trod on his heels, tried to be too funny in their promos and weren't menacing or villainous enough. That's a word. It shut them down and cut. And lecture and custom body out, which start over. But he had a way that he knew what his film was going to be cast. How is going to be cast and it wasn't going to be cast? Well, Hugh Murdoch was the worst one. Murdoch had a great sense of humor, and Murdoch was the same way in the ring when Murdoch wanted to be serious. He was as good a worker as you could find, and I will go to my grave saying that if he had been more reliable, dependable, he would have been an NWA champion. But Dickie was sometimes one of the Three Stooges routine in the middle of a match, and it pissed off serious workers and promoters. And Bill wouldn't stand for that. You know, Murdoch is when Murdoch was a babyface Hitler, he did a bit more humor, the more whenever he was know he was a heel. You've got to be serious, and I want people to pay money to come see him with your a*s. I don't want to be laughing at you or enjoying what you're doing. I want them to hate your a*s. Well, this was the whole deal there. This column is hard. It's just hard to do. I I admire. I think that most talented entertainers are great comedians. I truly believe that. Well, with that being said, and talking about the glimmer of humor as Bill wants would only let so much of it in. And to your point about, it's got to be the right talent with the right ability and then touching upon promos. Let's take this thing home. Let's finish up talking about promos. And when we pick back up again and a couple of weeks, we'll spend a lot of time on promos. But let's get started and you're in your mind, in your heart. What is a winning promo about? Is it convection? Is it, you know, the content? Is it the situation at hand? Let's talk about that. What makes a successful money drawn promo and your brain? Well, I think every promo is going to have structure. You've got to have a hot start. You've got to have a meeting needing middle m8y. You've got to have substance, in other words, in the middle of it and you've got to have a helluva go home line. And so there's got to be structure. You've got to have something you can't go out there like a cabbage. All had no rear end and have a good promo. Promos are designed to sell. They're either selling you as a character or you're selling a Pay-Per-View, you're selling a live event ticket, you're selling what's still to come, you're selling something and every promo that's done, in my estimation. And and to be a good salesman, you've got to have structure. And I think the problems, they've got to have some structure now. And my telling you in an off the cuff code that they've got to be scripted. Absolutely not. The best promos are the ones where a talent can be himself or herself. They can. They can put their structure together in bullet point form from somebody that they're working with, whomever they're taking their direction from. And then they can translate that into themselves. I have to believe that you're telling me that you're sincere about what you're saying and whatever context it is. I have to believe that you're not bulls**tting me. If I think that you're bulls**tting me, then I am tuning you out. I might hear you, but I'm not listening to you. And when the audience starts listening to a promo, they hear it or hear the audible noise and they but they're not listening. LAUGHTER. So you got to have structure. You got to be real in the moment. Real in the moment. A lot of your promos, you had humor in your promos, but it was the right time at the right place. But when it comes down to not cutting time, I didn't have to worry that I knew that Stone Cold was telling me what he believed in his heart. And you weren't winking at me that you to put somebody else at WrestleMania. Now, if I said I was going to whip somebody his ass, I was damn sure going to go out and attempt to do that now. Could I fail? Maybe that would depend, and we'll get down the road to that point. But I'm going in there with all conventions and I am going to win. I'm going to win, I'm going to whip your a*s. I will do whatever it takes for some of my best promos right off the fly here and a guy talking and responding accordingly. It's one thing when you got a chance to sit there and yeah, he's probably going to say this. I might say a little bit of that, but once the somebody fires off on that horn and you're listening, I mean, I can listen to a guy's promo on me and know, Hey, man, I might have 10 15 minutes to get to me for an hour before I get my time on the horn. But my adrenaline jarred is starting to boil because that's Sam has done fired me up. Now it's in a business standpoint, and he might have been shooting a little bit there, but it was all geared towards the persona and the building that stone cold was. So when you talking to me, I'm listenin and everybody knows I'm a little hard of hearing, but I can hear a pin drop in a building so somebody is talking s**t to me. If someone says You're going to whip my ass, I'm going to respond accordingly. So most of my stuff was all off the cuff and I remember when I came back. For my next surgery, you know, the business had kind of started changing at that point, and by the time I came back a year later, they were kind of starting to give guys out lines and stuff like that. And I was like, Holy s**t, man, that's a whole different program from when I was here. And at that point, you know, I was kind of going with the flow a little bit, but it was totally different for me. I never enjoyed promos quite as much. Following that protocol as I did when I was free. Well, on it. Yeah, I think most I think all the great talkers were natural extensions of themselves. They were entrepreneurs that the entrepreneurial spirit they believed in their character, they believed in what they were selling. I think that what's made, you know, my success is because I never played the role of a wrestling announcer. I never use a fake name for what that's worth. If it's anything, I mean, why I said that, but I never use a stage name. The only thing I ever did that was different than what my normal day to day was wearing a black hat. And now, if I don't ever forget that Black Hat, if I'm going to next to coach these kids are to work with these new announcers. Guess what? I wore my black hat to the Oklahoma City airport down at DFW, to the airport, all the way to Orlando, to the rental car place and to the hotel that black hats a big part of me now. So that's and I got no problem with it. That's what people expect to see. But I always believed in me because I knew that being a chubby southern accent guy, I was going to be challenged to make it on a national level in any endeavor, whether it be the NFL or college football or whatever. Now, egocentric glee do. I believe that in another life I could have been an NFL broadcaster or a college football broadcaster? You download without question, without question. But that's not wasn't my calling. And I wouldn't change a damn thing about how everything went. And then when you get Bell's palsy three times and you can't smile, you get your facial expressions change, you've got to have the you've got to believe in yourself. And I believe in what I did. I believe in my passion. I believe in my heart and soul. But what I saw on the monitor, I was going to make sure that the person at home felt it because I was emotionally invested in what I did for a living and proud of it. Still, am and what a great promo guy goes out there. He's got to be he or she got to be and emotionally invested in that character. Who are you? You should be an extension of who you are as a human being and just turn the volume up a little bit. You mean a little bit more passion. And because then you're organic, you're natural. You know, I watch your movies and I see Steve. I don't see and I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's an insult to to a real actor person like you are now. But I see real. I see organic. I see when you, I just see real. And I don't look past and you're acting out. I get immersed in the story. And I think that's what you are supposed to do when I watch a movie get immersed into the story. I'm still nervous about that aspect of it. I got a long ways to go on that. But as a stone cold Steve Austin, 100 percent of the time out there, I believe the one hundred and twenty percent everything I was doing was real deal, whether it was in the ring and I was working or cutting a promo on a guy to draw money, it was all a real deal to me. And the thing about it is I've really run out of time for this damn show and I'm going to have Jim Ross on again. We're going to keep talking about the promo. We're talking about drawing money, getting hired, fired, hired back, fired again. The story of Jim Ross as it goes down the road of professional wrestling. My good friend. Thank you for joining me. This is Steve Austin. And I'll catch your a*s down the road. Thank you for joining us for another classic episode of the Steve Austin Joe. Please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends. For more Steve Austin show, go to PodcastOne account. That's podcast only account. See what hit blockbusters are streaming free this month during Popcorn Summer movies on Pluto TV. Watch Django Unchained or Transformers Dark of the Moon for an action packed evening or The Truman Show and School of Rock for a good laugh when the whole family. Plus, Pluto TV has thousands of other free movies available on live and on demand. Download Pluto TV on all your favorite devices for free and start streaming now listed below decks captain Lee. Listen to my new podcast Salty with Captain Lee. Don't you mean our podcast? Yeah, I guess I do anyhow. Listen to Soldi with Captain Lee, co-hosted by my assistant Sam, and we will be talking about the latest pop culture news and all the gossip every week. 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