Episode 399: WCW Let Fans Book Nitro!
83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff
Podcast Heat
4.6 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2025
⏱️ 148 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad revisit the unforgettable episode of Monday Nitro where the fans booked the main event! Eric shares his thoughts on this bold experiment and how it helped shape fan interaction in professional wrestling for years to come.
Plus, the guys welcome special guest — former WWE and WCW superstar Barry Darsow — to talk about his brand-new book, Sickles, Studs, and Stolen Cars. Barry and Eric also reflect on the infamous Blacktop Bully vs. Dustin Rhodes match that ended up costing Barry his job. And if that's not enough, Massive Heat's Raj Giri joins the show with the latest news and notes from around the wrestling world. It's a can't-miss edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, just in time for the holidays, what if you didn't have to worry about any of that credit card debt? |
| 0:04.3 | If you're feeling stuck making the minimum payments and you don't want to have to put |
| 0:07.7 | Christmas on a credit card, we can help at save withconrad.com. |
| 0:11.9 | We routinely help our listeners save hundreds of dollars a month. |
| 0:15.3 | Find out how much money you can save right now for free at save with conrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad, the mortgage guy, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric fish off. |
| 0:48.6 | Eric, what's going on, man? |
| 0:49.7 | How are you? |
| 0:50.7 | I'm good, man. |
| 0:51.6 | How can I be bad? |
| 0:52.4 | Every time I hear that music, it just puts a goofy-ass smile on my face. I love it. It does for all of us, man. We love the old NWO theme, and we love talking, wrestling with you. And I'm excited because today we're going to be talking about Nitro from 30 years ago. I absolutely love this. I can't believe that we're able to do this. I want to give a quick shout out to Jason Taylor, who's one of our top guys over at ad-freeshows.com. He's been with us for a long time. I want to show him a little love. And then let's jump right into, I can't believe this is real. Nitro 30 years ago, November 6th, 1995. |
| 1:28.4 | This was, of course, at the Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida. |
| 1:32.5 | You've got 9,500 in attendance. |
| 1:34.5 | About 3,500 of those are paying a gate of roughly $30,000. |
| 1:40.2 | So I guess we've gotten rid of all of the available tickets, |
| 1:43.3 | but it's not technically sold out. |
| 1:45.7 | But that was just the process, the growing pains of WCW and Monday Nitro, right? |
| 1:51.0 | You're still trying to find your voice and establish this new brand? |
| 1:55.1 | Yeah, I mean, we established ourselves very competitively in terms of television ratings right off the bat, but it takes a while |
| 2:02.6 | to activate the audience, right? It took us, I don't know, I don't remember off the top of my head, |
| 2:10.2 | but I think it was a good year before all of the success that we had been having on television |
| 2:15.6 | night show actually manifested in terms of |
| 2:19.2 | ticket sales. So it doesn't, unfortunately, people, fans like to think it all happens overnight. |
... |
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