February 5th marks the 35th anniversary of one of the most memorable angles in wrestling history an angle that had Hulk

Ogan seeing double

Yes, the famous twin referee angle with brothers Earl and Dave Hepner that took place on the inaugural episode of Main Event with Andre the giant pinning

WWF Champion Hulk Ogan. It would also mark Earl Hepner's WWF debut on February 5th at 8 p.m. Eastern

35 years to the day. Add free shows members will get the opportunity to watch back this historic moment live alongside Earl Hepner in our latest premium watch along event. All $29

level members in higher are invited and top guy members will get to come up and ask Earl questions. Reserve your seat by signing up today at addfreeshows.com

Hello everybody and thanks for joining us here at Strictly Business as you may notice I'm flying solo today well for a few moments anyway because my partner John Alba I think he told me yesterday he was going to Tampa on business but I found out a little bird told me that there's a kickoff tour for Bruce Springsteen going on in Tampa which is where coincidentally Mr. Alba is headed so by the way I hope that's the case. I do

it to so without any further ado I want to talk to a guy that I know knows all about story if you've been following social media at all I think you've probably seen a lot of the same comments that I have that being that the Roman Reigns bloodline semi Zane story line has been one of the best ones people have seen.

I don't know a long long time so to break it down because admittedly I haven't seen it all the way through the guy that I know that has and can break down the story better than anybody I know Mr. Tom to shan Tom come on in.

Hey alright thank you so much Eric I appreciate the invitation it's always a pleasure to be here on Strictly Business always a pleasure to be with you and always a pleasure to be talking about professional wrestling and storytelling my two passions in life.

So I you know I mentioned briefly a little bit of a disclaimer I have not been following that story closely I did watch it yesterday I watched that match I don't watch the entire role on both but I did watch that match I really dug the finish.

But I'd like to hear from you because I know you followed that story why you think fans are reacting to it is strongly and positively as they are.

Well I'm going to give you a simple answer first and then a little bit more of a complicated answer the simple answer is all we've ever wanted is just good compelling television.

And I think that there are a lot of people who've been watching professional wrestling especially since the end of the Monday night wars that have kind of been missing that especially from the WWE product you know it's something that maybe after

ECW and WCW were no more there really wasn't much competition anymore and then the storylines maybe weren't mattering as much as some of the skits and vignettes and different things that we were seeing at a WWE booking.

So the fact that we've been blessed with this great long term story this is what we've been wanting for so long especially long time fans folks who remember what the storylines were like in the late 80s in the golden era you know of the NWA and

WCW and WF but then also fans from the attitude era who remember what it was like when you had the NWA storyline on one television show and then you flip the channel and you've got Austin versus McMahon on the other channel this is what we've been yearning for for so long and this is what we've gotten.

And you know from a more complicated sort of answer to sort of break it down a little bit to what we're seeing here is real long term storytelling that's taking all the boxes of classic storytelling we have compelling characters we have twists and turns we have logical episodic.

And you know development of characters and of the story break progression and there have been so many moments following this story that have let me surprise and I think that too is one of the things that we've really been missing from WWE program programming especially over the last several years and decades.

So we can break break all this stuff down and get into it but I'm super excited to be here with you because I know you're the man behind some of the greatest storylines and wrestling history so just being able to break this down with you and go back and forth a little bit on what makes a compelling character what makes for a compelling storyline and really why this one in particular is just caught fire.

And Tom one of the things I want to really zero in on before we get too far into the story because you cover some really interesting points that sometimes I think when wrestling fans here long term storytelling to them that means you shoot an angle in January it kind of floats around it doesn't really go anywhere it's it's active and then there's some kind of a blow off.

And then it's like months down the road and that you know oftentimes with wrestling fans at least that I get social media responses from well that's a long term story what you just described in the attributes that you assigned to the most recent long term story in WWE that being the bloodline is a really critical elements along the way.

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