Original subtitles

[tense music playing]

[announcer] The World Wrestling Entertainment Ladies Champion,

Wendi Richter!

[crowd cheering]

[McMahon] Wendi Richter was the champion, and everything was fine for a while.

But Wendi had become a problem, as I recall.

Every woman in professional wrestling wants my belt,

but I want it too and I had to...

[McMahon] When it was time to do the honors,

and pass that championship to someone else, she resisted.

And it's like, "This is show business." You know? "I'm writing a script."

"You're holding my championship belt."

"It's mine, it's not yours."

"I'm not gonna give it up."

"Well, all right."

"I'm gonna make you give it up, then."

[announcer] This contest is for the ladies' championship.

[McMahon] The audience is expecting a match.

You don't wanna fire someone when you're expecting a match,

because you're screwing the public then.

So, get the match in the ring, as my dad used to say,

and then you figure it out.

[bell rings]

[announcer] Bell's gone, and we're underway in this title match-up.

The match is in the ring, Wendi has the championship.

It's really easy.

Somewhere in this match, Wendi's gonna get rolled up.

Told the ref simply, "Just count to three."

[announcer] Oh, small package. Nicely executed.

Whoa, was that close.

-[crowd cheering] -[bell ringing]

[announcer] What was that?

The referee counted, "One." I lifted my shoulder up,

and he counted, "two, three," even with my shoulders off the mat.

[announcer] Wendi Richter has lost her title.

That was a very painful night. [sighs]

My dreams were completely shattered.

I was humiliated, and it was on television.

I didn't care.

It was like, the public being in an uproar...

"Oh my God, you know, it really wasn't a fair count."

My answer to that is life's not fair sometimes,

and, you know, I don't fight fair.

There's a saying in wrestling, "It's nothing personal, just business."

And I think that's what Vince McMahon is. He's a businessman.

[McMahon] Wendi came back after the match.

She looked at me, bowed her head, and walked out.

That was the last I ever saw of Wendi.

But for me, it was nothing personal.

This is business, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for our business.

[reporter 1] Vince McMahon came in wearing a neck brace and smiling,

in his second week on trial for steroid-selling conspiracy.

Today, McMahon was upstaged by his former number one star, Hulk Hogan.

[reporter 2] The man behind the character would shed his Spandex

and jump into the ring at US District Court

to testify with immunity against Vince McMahon, his former boss.

This was to be the main event

in the prosecution's conspiracy case against McMahon.

It was time for me to go testify. I walked across the courtroom.

As I walked by, there was Vince McMahon sitting there,

and we were at each other's throats at the time.

The feds thought that this is the perfect opportunity for me

to throw dirt on Vince

and all of a sudden run wild with the wrestling world.

Went and testified, and I think they were shocked.

[reporter] On cross-examination, a powerslam by the defense.

[reporter reading transcript]

One of the last times I talked to Vince,

and it had been months and months since we talked,

one of the last things I said to him,

"Brother, we go all the way up together, and we go all the way down together."

"Don't forget that."

As far as Hulk Hogan on the stand,

I can tell you that the government was surprised.

I could see the faces on the prosecutors.

"This is not what we were expecting." Because Hogan totally backed Vince.

[interviewer] Did the government know what you'd say?

No, I wouldn't tell them.

I just said, "I'll say whatever you guys need me to say."

Told them what they wanted to hear, but I knew what I was gonna say.

I was gonna tell the truth.

He didn't sell steroids. He didn't tell people to take them.

All the stuff they said about him was not true.

[McMahon] He was crafty in terms of giving the government what they wanted

to a certain extent, but not what they really wanted.

They really wanted someone to say, "Vince McMahon told me to take steroids."

They even called me. They wanted me to testify against Vince.

"Did Vince encourage you to do steroids?"

I said, "No, I was using steroids before I met Vince."

He let us do it, let's put it thataway, but he didn't sell it to us.

[Bret Hart] There was a strong influence to take them, just based on common sense

and realizing all the guys that are on steroids are the main event guys,

but Vince telling me or any other wrestler to take steroids?

I never saw it.

Vince isn't going to someone and going, "Hey, you, go on steroids."

But would he say, "Hey, you need to work out harder,"

thinking they'll go on steroids?

Um... who knows?

I wasn't guilty of anything.

Didn't change the fact these bastards were coming after me for no good reason.

So, naturally, I'm concerned.

This is my liberty,

and when you're about to hear the... the verdict, it's like, "Holy shit."

That's a moment you'll never forget.

That's a moment whereby my life is about to change.

[reporter 1] World Wrestling Entertainment head Vince McMahon

allowed himself just the slightest expression of relief

as the verdict was read.

[reporter 2] The verdict, not guilty.

Cheers from fans roared through the courtroom.

An emotional hug from his wife of 27 years, Linda.

I was there. The verdict happened and, uh...

it was relief.

[Meltzer] it shouldn't have gone to trial. They didn't have evidence to convict him.

Hello, I'm Vince McMahon...

[Meltzer] I think they did it because they thought Vince was a bad guy,

If you're a newspaper reporter, you can go after him for that.

If you're gonna put him on trial, you have to have more than that.

If there were any doubters

as to what World Wrestling Entertainment was and is all about,

I think this just cleared up all of them.

[Meltzer] I remember Linda, "It proved we didn't have a steroid problem."

And it's like, no, the case proved, by all testimony,

that most of your guys were on steroids, and your biggest stars were on steroids.

That's what the case proved.

Gonna try to portray him as the good guy, but Vince was the bad guy.

He wasn't convicted, nor should he have been,

but he wasn't the good guy.

[McMahon] I don't know that I learned really anything.

The only thing I learned about business is some people in the government suck.

World Wrestling...

[Shoemaker] Vince always paints himself as the victim in this trial.

I don't think it was a surprise that he was found innocent.

I don't... I don't mean to imply that he should have ended up guilty,

but there are rumors and reports

about everything Vince's team did to try to win.

Stories of contacting witnesses, of payoffs, jury tampering,

all of which paints Vince in a way that's very different

than the way he would like to portray himself.

Stay tuned...

So after the trial, after this whole series of scandals,

Vince probably felt invincible.

But that wasn't the case.

[Prichard] Regardless of what the outcome was,

the trial affected business in a huge way.

Things got tight, and things got scary.

Some executives left. I don't blame them.

Would I wish they didn't leave and what have you?

Sure I do.

Uh, because it hurt the company, the fact that they left.

[Meltzer] During that period, their business struggled.

They had years that they lost money. Their revenues were way down.

They were, um, in pretty big financial straits.

[Hart] The company took a huge drop in attendance.

No more sell-outs.

Business wasn't the same as it was when Hulk Hogan was on top.

What Vince was looking for

was someone that would replace Hulk as the face of WWE,

and Vince thought it could be Lex.

[McMahon] Made in the USA, Lex Luger!

We did put the machine, so to speak, behind Lex Luger

and thought he was gonna be awesome.

Let's take a look now at some footage of the Lex Express.

Lex was okay, but nowhere near Hulk Hogan.

I know it, you know it, everyone out there knows it...

Lex just wasn't capable of connecting with the audience.

Lex was just another in a long chain of guys

trying to fill Hulk's shoes.

They had to replace Hulk Hogan,

and the guy that pulled the sword out of the stone was Bret Hart.

[echoing] Bret!

Go get 'em, champ.

[hard rock music playing]

[kid] Wow.

The New Generation was a new era. We have new stars. We have Bret Hart.

You know, in the WWE, there is a lot of changes.

[Hart, present day] Then we have Razor Ramon.

There's only one man who is oozing machismo.

[Hart] We had Kevin Nash.

On lives the new generation!

[Hart] And we have Shawn Michaels.

[Michaels] I'm the Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels, Jack.

I'm the man that made history.

Once you knew that it was no longer sort of the Hogan era,

it kind of just put a question mark on everything.

Everything is up for grabs.

For most of us in the locker room, it got a bit more hopeful

that this was kind of anybody's ballgame.

Hulk's gone, now who's gonna step up?

That was the mindset.

And there were plenty of guys that were waiting to fill that void.

[Hart] The guys that we had, the New Generation guys,

like myself and Undertaker,

some of the best wrestlers maybe ever.

I was kind of proud to be the torchbearer for the New Generation.

There were many liabilities on the company at that time,

and I was the safest guy.

Bret Hart's not gonna get busted with an underage girl in a hotel,

or, "We found a kilo of cocaine in his bag."

It seems to me that you bring a certain humility.

That's why Vince said,

"We're gonna make you champion for a long time."

"You can hold the fort while we deal with all these issues right now."

[Vince] Bret comes from the Hart family,

which has produced many, many performers in the past.

Very interesting family.

Bret didn't have all that much charisma.

He had some, enough.

So it was kind of nip and tuck for a while.

At the same time, during the course of that,

Ted Turner starts grabbing some of the talent,

so had to deal with that as well.

Ted opened up the checkbook and said to the people working there,

"You can do whatever you want. Just make this happen."

[Bollea] WCW is different than WWE,

because there was so much more money there.

I mean, I cut these crazy deals when I first walked in,

and it was like dying and going to heaven as far as the wrestling business.

The amount of money he was offering them

was far greater than the amount they had ever made here,

so it was logical for a lot of them to leave and go join Ted's organization.

And what you gonna do?

[Bischoff] Shortly after Hulk Hogan,

Randy Savage all of a sudden became available.

Unfortunately, Randy Savage has been unable to sign a contract

with the WWE...

[Bischoff] That was the next big one.

That's when things started to really feel like we had momentum.

After Hulk jumped on board and after Randy jumped on board,

people were looking at WCW a little differently.

At one point, I had a meeting with Ted Turner,

and he said, "Eric, what's it gonna take to be competitive with WWE?"

I said, "Well, Ted, Monday Night Raw,

you know that's on Monday night on USA prime time, right?"

"We're on Saturday night at 6:05 Eastern, 3:05 Pacific."

"We can't compete."

And without missing a beat,

Ted looked over to the head of TNT and said,

"Give Eric two hours every Monday night on TNT."

And I was like, "Wh... What?!"

I just thought it'd be a good idea,

that'd at least show that we've been on the map for so long.

We have been hammerlocked, sucker-punched,

beat up, jumped on, stomped out,

chairs broken over our heads,

all the wrestling stuff, by Vince for so long,

that I just thought we'll just go head-to-head with him

and see how it goes. We'll get in the ring with him.

As soon as I heard they were gonna go head-to-head,

that was like, "Ooh-ooh. We're in trouble."

I don't know what's gonna happen, but won't be good.

Or it was gonna put us out of business, quite frankly.

[announcer] Welcome back to the action here on the debut edition

of WCW Monday Nitro...

[Bischoff] Now I've got this thing called Nitro,

I've got to figure out a way to create some real surprises.

[announcer] What a matchup we have got in store.

What?! What in the hell is he doing here?

[Prichard] For their first show, they had Lex Luger show up.

We had him on one of our live events the Sunday night before,

and then he appeared on Nitro the very next night.

[announcer] Whoa! Wait a minute!

It was a big surprise. It was like, "Oh my God."

What are you doing here, Luger?

[Bischoff] When Lex walked out, not only was the audience in shock,

but everybody in WWE was in shock,

because they thought he was still under contract.

And he's not.

[understated music playing]

[Bischoff] It was fortuitous in the sense of timing

because Lex Luger was tired of WWE.

He wasn't happy there.

So I said, "Lex, here's the deal. We're gonna do a deal."

"You cannot tell anybody. You can't tell WWE."

"You just go about your business."

I'm here for one reason...

Yeah, that was embarrassing. That was really embarrassing.

It pissed Vince off.

[sighs] It was a beautiful thing.

Lex Luger, you're a good man.

[McMahon] All I had with these guys was handshakes, not a contract expiring.

I just had handshakes. It had worked for years.

No longer was it working because of Ted's enormous wealth.

And I was like, "Man. Wow, this is brutal."

Because you helped get these talents over, you helped build them,

then all of a sudden, poof. They're gone.

[Prichard] They'd one-upped us.

It looked like that was the cool place to go,

that people are leaving WWE to go to WCW

because WCW is new, it's cool, it's different.

Eric was ruthless.

It absolutely set the tone. And that was the intent.

After realizing I can't be better than them at what they do,

what are my options?

I started making a list of every way that I could be different than the WWE.

Top of the list, they're taped.

Hmm. Okay. I'm live.

At Nitro, we are coming to you live!

They're cartoonish, because they're appealing to a teen and preteen audience.

I'm gonna be more real.

I wanted my characters to appeal to an older audience.

I wanted my stories to be more reality-based.

I'm not gonna try to land my plane over here.

I'm gonna land my plane over here.

I wanted Nitro to be recognized

as the wrestling company where you never knew what was going to happen.

[Bollea] I knew it was full-blown warfare from that point on,

because I know how Vince feels about his competition.

He wants to destroy it and then eat it.

[hard rock music playing]

[Bischoff] Hello, everybody, and welcome! We are live!

We are not like the World Whining Entertainment,

which is a taped, canned show.

[Bischoff] I had live TV now,

so I had the ability to do things that my competition couldn't do.

That gave me a really strong tactical advantage.

At that time, Monday Night Raw was still being taped,

and the results of those tapings were public,

because there were five or six or seven thousand people in the arena.

As soon as our show would open up, I would say, "Yeah, we're live

and anything can happen. Not like those other guys."

"In fact, don't bother watching that show. Here's what happened."

And I'd give away the finishes.

[Bischoff] In case you're tempted to grab the remote control,

check out the competition, don't bother.

Shawn Michaels beat the big guy with a superkick.

Stay right here. It's live. It's where the action is.

They would give away the results. That hurt us for quite some time.

Aggravated the hell out of us for sure.

It's little things like that that just went and...

It was digs, constant digs.

I wanted to upset the WWE audience,

because I knew if I upset them enough,

they'd tune in to see what kind of dastardly stuff

I was gonna do next week.

There were many things that they did to aggravate the hell out of us,

uh, which, when I'm angered, um,

then I'm gonna focus all the more.

[Bischoff] Everybody that I knew that was close to Vince,

like Hulk, like Randy, they would say, "Vince will never sell."

He doesn't sell.

He never sold a thing.

Selling is wearing your emotions on your face.

Yeah, Vince'll never let you see him sweat.

"Don't sell it. Never acknowledge the competition."

The more people would tell me that, the more I'd go, "Watch. I'll get him."

Eric would bring out our former women's champion

with our championship belt,

and live on their show,

throws it in the trash.

[McMahon] That was upsetting.

It was like, "Oh my God."

[chuckles] "What else are they gonna do to us?"

I kept gnawing at him and biting him and doing everything I could

to get him to react, and he did.

[man] Billionaire Ted. First of all...

[Bischoff] They started doing the Billionaire Ted skits.

That was the first real sell.

I finally got him to react, which means he was off balance.

[mimicking Ted Turner] Well, why can't I buy the WWE?

When I saw them, it's like, "Let's tape these things. I gotta run 'em up to Ted."

We brought them up to Ted, and Ted laughed his ass off.

He thought they were funny as hell.

[laughing]

That's supposed to be the Hulkster. [chuckles]

I said, "We're trying to have some fun with him."

And then Kay Koplovitz shut us down.

It was really distasteful.

We didn't like it particularly,

even though we were competitors with Turner.

It just didn't belong on our air. It isn't who we wanted to be at USA.

[McMahon] Kay Koplovitz made us stop because Ted was a friend of hers.

We're friends. Friendly competitors, I guess you might say.

[Prichard] USA Network suggested that we stop,

because they were receiving heat from folks in the Turner organization,

saying, "This is over the line,

and now you're talking about how much lithium he takes..."

Jane, where's my lithium?

In hindsight, I wish that we hadn't done that.

I think we should have been above it. But we did.

And that's also where I figured out Razor Ramon and Diesel,

they're not staying.

Because I asked Razor and Diesel to do one,

and they didn't wanna do it.

"Why wouldn't you do this?" "Yeah, I just don't want to."

"Are you going there?" "No, no, no."

[McMahon] I had a long conversation, with Scott Hall, Razor Ramon,

and Diesel, Kevin Nash.

They really didn't wanna go to WCW.

At the same time, they have to look into the mirror

and have to know, "Wait a minute. It's better for my family

from a paycheck standpoint to go there than it is here."

That was just pure money and schedule.

They were offered more money and a better schedule.

[Michaels] When Scott and Kevin signed with WCW,

certainly from a professional standpoint, thrilled for them.

From a personal standpoint, it hurt a bit because I was gonna miss my buddies.

There was a group of us that were all friends backstage. "The Kliq."

Kevin Nash,

Scott Hall,

Shawn Michaels,

and myself.

The Kliq sort of became this famous thing

that everybody knew about

even though it was never portrayed on TV.

So, you flash forward to the final night of Diesel and Razor Ramon.

It's not a pay-per-view. It's a live event with no TV.

Earlier in the day, Shawn had talked to Vince

about doing some kind of tribute to those guys at the end of the night,

and Vince agrees to, "Something can happen."

I remember him asking me, "Is it important to you, Shawn?"

I said, "Yes, sir." And he goes, "Then it's important to me. Go ahead."

Since two of them were leaving, you know, "Okay. You got my blessing."

[crowd cheering]

[Levesque] Kevin and Shawn were wrestling each other in a cage match.

They get to the end of the match, and we all end up in the cage together.

There's this big embrace moment.

-[man] Oh yeah! -[crowd cheering]

Basically, a curtain call.

From an old-timer, uh, it was sacrilege to have rivals do that

and to just let everybody know, "Hey, guys. You know, show's over."

"We really love each other. Everything's good."

I was actually there at the Garden that night.

I'm sitting there in the audience like, "What is this?"

"I can't believe they're doing this. My dad's gonna be so mad."

Part of me thought it was a little bit cool,

but part of me was like, "Oh, I know how wrong this is."

To anyone of my age, it was cool.

But to your older generation of producers and wrestlers,

it was the cardinal sin.

I wasn't there that night, but, yeah, I was with the company.

-Yeah, I got thoughts on that. Yeah. -[interviewer] What are your thoughts?

I didn't like it.

They killed wrestling that day.

That was when wrestling wasn't real anymore.

We'd pulled the curtain back and said, "This is how it works."

That was the unveiling of the new direction that wrestling would be.

It's not wrestling anymore. It's entertainment.

When they came back out of the... out of the ring,

well, there were a number of performers other than them

who really hit the roof. Like I can't imagine...

It was what we call a kayfabe type situation.

So if you go back to the way the business was,

there's a thing called kayfabe.

Kayfabe.

Kayfabe.

Kayfabe.

Kayfabe is a carnival term, initially.

Kayfabe is the fiction that is being produced by a con artist

where everybody who's involved in the con agrees to maintain this reality.

[Hart] Kayfabe is basically keeping the illusion that it's real.

You say "kayfabe," and you know that you gotta be in character

and pretend everything is real.

You know, good guys stayed with good guys,

and bad guys stayed with bad guys,

and never should the two intermingle.

And for years and years, we tried to work off of the premise

that wrestling was not predetermined,

and that when you had a feud with somebody, it was a blood feud,

and it carried on outside of the ring.

The way I came up, and in the time period I came up,

I, I lived that, and I believed in that mindset,

even though I knew, like, they know that I'm a real person,

I always wanted to cast that doubt, like,

"That dude is legit not right."

"He thinks he is that guy."

I kind of protected the business and protected the character so much.

I was just always trying to keep people intrigued.

But it was becoming this antiquated thing. Like, everybody knew.

In that period of time, there were what were called newsletters, dirt sheets,

with a lot of rumor and innuendo.

So, if you went to a show,

people are talking about what's real and what's not.

I honestly don't have any idea why kayfabe and all that

was still so important.

And I guess that was our point with the curtain call.

We felt like everybody already knew then.

What was sincerely meant to be just an innocent act

turned into such controversy.

I felt like, "I don't know, was I talked into this?"

"Was I not?"

You know, I let it happen.

At the same time, I can't let it happen again.

So, um, there were some repercussions.

[Levesque] Kev's gone, Scott's gone, Shawn's WWE champion.

[scoffs]

Heads are gonna roll,

but it's gonna only be one, and it's going to be mine.

Somebody has to pay for that,

and, you know, in that particular case, it was Hunter.

[Levesque] So, at that point in time, I was supposed to win King of the Ring,

and that's all gonna go away.

I said, "You know, Vince, the one thing that's crazy to me..."

[crowd cheering]

"...the biggest reaction of the night by far was that moment."

"The world is changing,

and we're going to have to change with it, I think."

And he said, "Yeah, but it's not right now."

"I gotta do something. I can't just let this go."

And to quote Vince, "You're going to have to learn to eat shit

and like the taste of it."

Vince was not yet ready to adapt, to evolve into the modern age.

But WCW was.

[hard rock music playing]

[Bischoff] Welcome back live to the first hour of this edition

of WCW Monday Nitro on TNT.

I'd been thinking about this storyline in my head for a long time.

Called it "The Outsiders."

But I couldn't quite make it work the way I wanted to make it work

because I didn't have the right talent.

And now with Scott coming in and Kevin Nash becoming available,

I now have the perfect cast.

You people, you know who I am.

[crowd cheering]

But you don't know why I'm here.

It was two guys coming in from the outside to wreak havoc inside of WCW.

This is where the big boys play, huh?

[crowd cheering]

We ain't here to play.

[Cody Rhodes] The Outsiders showing up and coming to WCW

is maybe the last example

of where fans could not fully tell,

"Is this real?"

[Bischoff] The way I brought them in, some of the less-than-nuanced dialogue,

led certain people to believe that they were there on WWE's behalf.

Do you work for the WWE?

The audience wasn't sure if it was real or if it was scripted.

That's the sweet spot.

You don't jack us around. Don't jack us...

-[announcer] Oh, for crying... Oh! -[crowd exclaiming]

What are they doing?

-Security! -[announcer 2] Get up there right now!

[crowd screaming]

[announcer 1] Call security!

[Bischoff] It was a hell of a great idea.

Worked so well that Vince McMahon decided he had to sue us.

[McMahon] We sued them because they were trampling on our intellectual property.

[Prichard] They were presenting Scott Hall as Razor Ramon.

They didn't say his name was Razor Ramon,

but it was as close to Razor Ramon as you could get

without saying, "Hey, Razor Ramon."

You're stealing.

You know, that's... That's not the right way to do business.

Eh, stealing is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

It's funny, because immediately, Vince went into sympathetic babyface mode.

He started whining like a little schoolgirl with that.

"Big bad billionaire Ted's trying to run us out of business."

When you have the resources of a, uh, of a Ted Turner,

and you use these resources in a predatory fashion

in an effort to put a family-owned business out of action,

I think it's time...

[Bischoff] "Big bad billionaire Ted

is trying to hurt this small little family-run business."

There has been a systematic, uh, attempt

to raid the World Wrestling Entertainment of its talent.

"They raided our talent."

Vince did the exact same thing to Verne Gagne and the AWA

and other territories.

He literally went into those territories and offered their talent better deals.

That is exactly the MO of Vince McMahon in 1984 and 1985.

He took stars other people had created in certain parts of the country

and signed them up for more money,

and God bless him, he had the right to. Free enterprise.

But they had the right to do it too, because it's free enterprise.

[interviewer] One of your quotes was that Turner engaged in predatory practices.

-Right. -[interviewer] Did you...

You didn't see any similarity to what you were doing in the territories?

No. Again, Ted's philosophy was,

"Let's go hurt. I'm gonna hurt my competitor."

And that's not mine. I wanna go compete.

[interviewer] You didn't look at what Ted was doing as competing?

Sure, I did.

[intriguing music playing]

[interviewer] You said your philosophy is different than Ted's.

-He's trying to hurt the person. -Right. Correct.

Some would think it might be hypocritical for me to say,

"Uh, okay, I don't hurt someone else. I just do what's best for me."

Yet, when someone comes after me, I don't think they have the right.

Sure, they have the right. Again, what I say a lot of times

is totally different than what I think.

Um, and the public doesn't understand that sometimes.

As a businessman, you have to throw things out there.

It's not really the way you feel,

but...

it controls thought process by doing that.

[atmospheric music playing]

[Prichard] Vince is going to do whatever it takes

to be successful on the business side.

And during the Monday Night Wars, WCW was challenging us to fight.

A lot of people would tell you that when Hall and Nash went to WCW,

that that was the turning point.

But if you go back and you really look at the numbers

and you look at everything that happened,

what really turned the corner for WCW

was the Bash at the Beach,

where The Outsiders were going to bring in the third member.

Who's it going to be?

[Rhodes] I was there at the Bash at the Beach,

and Scott Hall and Kevin Nash have come from WWE

to almost wreck shop.

They were bad guys on this mission,

and they were claiming that they had a third man.

He's here, and he's ready.

Now the "Who's the Third Man?" mystery is out there in the audience, right?

[Bischoff] The third man is here, but he's not in the ring.

-[groans] -[thud]

[announcer] Now we're looking at two-on-two in this hostile takeover.

[Bischoff] Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were winning.

[crowd cheering]

And so, Hulk Hogan's coming out to make the save.

-[announcer 1] Hulk Hogan is here! -[announcer 2] Damn right he is!

[announcer 1] Get 'em, Hulkster!

[Bollea] When I walked out at Bash at the Beach,

Kevin Nash and Scott Hall ran for their lives,

[announcer 1] Yes, sir! Get 'em, Hogan!

The roof was coming off. The hero was coming to save the day.

[announcer 1] Hulk Hogan arrives... Hulk!

[announcer 2] What's he doing?!

-Is he the third man? -[announcer 1] Third man!

[announcer 2] What the hell is going on?!

When Hulk finally dropped the leg on Randy Savage,

people were literally shocked.

-[announcer 2] What the hell is going on?! -[announcer 1] Oh God!

[Rhodes] It was a huge defining moment in all of sports entertainment,

because it was surreal to think that the biggest babyface,

the biggest good guy in the history of the industry,

is gonna go the other way.

[announcer 1] Feels it all.

[announcer 2] Hulksters with tears rolling down.

You can't turn Hulk Hogan bad. You can't do that.

That was a big "holy shit" moment.

-[announcer 1] A career of a lifetime. -[announcer 2] Right down the drain, kid.

[Bollea] When I walked out to be a bad guy,

I knew this was either gonna be the greatest moment of my career

or this would destroy my career.

That's the first time I'd ever been told there's a thing that's too much heat.

And maybe this was.

[crowd clamoring]

[Bollea] That rumble was there. It got kinda quiet. I'm like, "Shit."

I know we didn't have anybody watching the ring

in case they started coming.

Back in the day, I was used to them coming.

[announcer 1] What do we got here? We got a fan coming in.

[announcer 2] He didn't last long.

There were people throwing stuff in the ring and booing and screaming.

There were people crying.

[announcer 1] I never thought I'd see people throwing debris...

-[announcer 2] At Hulk Hogan. -[announcer 1] ...at Hogan.

It was the most amazing moment of my career.

[Rhodes] When you want to get everything you can out of the audience,

sometimes it's gotta be uncomfortable.

And it was just a very strong punch to the gut for wrestling fans.

[interviewer] When they made Hogan a heel,

had that been something you guys were considering ever?

No. Terry and I always thought

that we would simply keep Hulk Hogan as a good guy,

always be someone standing up for justice.

Vince McMahon missed out on the most lucrative opportunity.

He could've been the one to turn Hulk Hogan heel.

Every piece of trash that got thrown in the ring

was like a gold brick as far as WCW was concerned.

When he did turn heel, it was like, "Wow." He did that very well.

A lot of fans forget that I was a bad guy

when I first went to the WWE to work for Vince's father,

so it wasn't like this was my first barbecue.

And so I just slid into that Snidely Whiplash evil Hollywood character.

Tell these people to shut up if you wanna hear what I gotta say.

[crowd yelling]

I went out there, and I wheeled that promo from my hip, man.

That was nobody talking but me.

These two men right here came from a great big organization up north.

I made that organization a monster.

I made people rich up there.

[Bollea] I wanted to push hard against Vince

to prove a point that it takes two to tango.

It just wasn't one guy that did all this. It just wasn't Vince that did all this.

The man Hulk Hogan got bigger than the whole organization, brother.

[McMahon] In those days, it was a personal relationship

as well as a business one.

And when business goes wrong, generally speaking,

the personal relationship goes wrong.

Vince is very much "business is business."

However, there are certain times where the human being gets hurt.

With Hogan, it was personal.

That was the moment in time that...

shit changed.

You can call this the New World Order of Wrestling, brother.

The Outsiders eventually became the nWo storyline.

Here's the nWo!

Ready or not, here we come!

[tense music plays]

[Bischoff] nWo was coming in to take over WCW

and take all their biggest stars, and eventually overcome WCW.

The nWo is the only way to go!

Yes, it was a storyline. Yes, they were characters.

But in every sense of the word,

the nWo brand was in many respects more powerful than the WCW brand.

[Rhodes] During that period of time, WCW was cool.

It had the cool factor going on.

I started to see the WWE as "less than."

[Calaway] New World Order. It was edgy, like nothing that anyone had ever seen.

And they started kicking our ass week after week after week.

[Prichard] When Hulk became a bad guy?

[whooshes]

Switched.

And they beat us in the ratings, and they didn't look back for 83 weeks.

How many weeks? 83 straight weeks!

For 83 straight weeks!

For 83 weeks? Was it 83, or was it 84?

My podcast is called 83 Weeks.

For 83 straight weeks, we were stomping a mudhole in WWE.

We were so far ahead of them, it wasn't funny.

For us to be winning, you know, week after week after week,

it became infectious.

We thought we had the strongest team, the better stories...

No way we thought we could lose.

Not only are they kicking our butts in the ratings, they're mocking us.

They're really having their way with us.

This was a war, and I didn't know whether or not we'd even stay in business,

because Turner was coming after us.

I'm either all the way in, or I'm all the way out.

So, once we committed to go after Vince, I was all in.

Is there any question now

what is the most powerful organization in professional wrestling?

At some point, it was suggested to me that I become a part of the nWo,

and it... it made sense.

I'm Eric Bischoff!

[Bischoff] Because I was running WCW, I was recognized as the president of WCW.

-[announcer 1] Bischoff! -[announcer 2] Look who is leading them!

Who better to take over than the guy that's actually writing the checks?

For this man, I would do anything.

[Prichard] In the beginning of Monday Night Wars,

I don't think that Vince even considered Eric Bischoff.

Vince looked at the Monday Night Wars as something between Vince and Ted.

When you go back and you listen to the interviews,

Vince always talked about Ted Turner.

Ted Turner's wrestling organization...

Ted Turner tried to put him out of business.

Ted Turner this, Ted Turner that.

-Ted Turner... -Ted Turner...

Ted... Ted... Ted, trying to own World Wrestling Entertainment.

Was Vince McMahon going to come out and say,

"Hey, this guy named Eric Bischoff that's never been a wrestling executive,

has only been in a creative role for about a year and a half,

is kicking my butt every week for 83 weeks"?

He wanted the perception of the battle

to be between Ted Turner the billionaire media mogul

and little old Vince McMahon.

That elevated Vince, it made him the sympathetic babyface,

which is exactly what Vince wanted.

[interviewer] Do you remember the first time

hearing about Eric Bischoff?

Um, I didn't know... Well, actually, I didn't realize this,

but years before, Eric had come to WWE and auditioned as a television announcer.

[interviewer] Who's your hero, Eric?

My hero? Hulk Hogan, absolutely.

The man, the myth, the legend.

And I didn't get the job. I was very disappointed.

[interviewer] Did you regret not hiring him when you saw him show up?

-Regret not hiring him? -[interviewer] Yeah.

Um...

-No. -[interviewer] You don't regret it?

Um... I don't think I regret anything in my life.

[crowd cheering]

[McMahon] Eric did everything he possibly could do, as anyone would,

but everything that they basically did

pretty much was a WWE creation to begin with,

including when Turner took our talent that we had created.

At that time, I wanted to hang on to one of my stars.

So I made a deal with Bret.

He flew up to Calgary, flew up to my house,

and gave me his offer of a 20-year contract.

I owe it all to my WWE fans. I'll be with the WWE forever.

[crowd cheering]

All right! All right!

As soon as I signed, I said, "This isn't gonna be good."

"Wrong thing ego-wise."

It's a... It was a bad move, bad business move to try and keep Bret.

"I had to keep Bret."

"No, dumbass Vince, you didn't have to. Just create new stars, Vince."

So in any event, now there's a big contract, and it's not working.

So I go to Bret, and I said, "Bret, look, I can't afford to pay you

what I'm paying you now."

My dad took Bret's contract and showed Bret where the loopholes were,

and said, "You can use this as leverage to help negotiate yourself

a much better deal with WCW."

[McMahon] So Bret went for the other guys and, uh, was paid a lot of money.

[Shane McMahon] Bret Hart happened to be the WWE champion at the time.

All that my dad expected back was for Bret

to do the right thing business-wise since he was leaving

and lose to Shawn Michaels.

"You know, Bret, you have the property around your waist that belonged to WWE."

"It didn't belong to you. You didn't win it, you were granted that."

"I can't let you go to Turner with the WWE championship belt."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Bret had different ideas.

[Michaels] Everybody felt like he should drop the title to somebody before he goes,

and I don't even think Bret had a problem losing the match.

It was losing it to me.

Shawn was a real dick at that time,

and that's just the truth.

The Bret and Shawn rivalry thing, it was real and authentic.

Both Bret and I felt that Vince and the WWE were kind of capitalizing

on this real-life dissension that we had.

Shawn and Bret, two great performers, uh... were not getting along.

Shawn starting cutting what we call shooting promos.

They would go off-script and say something personal.

He stabbed World Wrestling Entertainment in the back.

Why? For his financial gain.

After a while,

you begin to know what bothers somebody,

and, man, I poked that bear like nobody's business.

I was... Look, I was such a prick.

[Hart] I came close to punching Shawn quite a few times.

[Michaels] Even though, lately, you've had some "sunny" days, my friend...

[Hart] Telling on national TV that I'm banging Sunny, when I'm a married man,

you're crossing a line where you're messing with my family.

You're messing with me on a personal level, and it's bullshit.

[interviewer] What were your thoughts about that?

My thoughts at the time was, "Well, this is good for television."

[announcer] The Survivor Series, presented live by Milton Bradley...

[McMahon] So we had this last match in Montreal.

"Bret, I want you to do the honors for Shawn tonight,

uh, because we need someone to replace you."

And Bret said, "Well, I don't wanna do that."

"Especially in Canada."

There was a... a phone call that happened with Shawn, myself, and Vince.

Vince said, "Look, Bret's not gonna do it. He refuses to do it."

I don't remember all the specifics, but I was the one that was like,

"Fuck that. If he won't do it, do it for him."

[Michaels] I met Vince when I was 23 years old.

I've spent more time with him than I have my own father.

I get emotional about it, 'cause it's... uh...

You know, I put him through a lot.

I was in a bad, bad place for a lot of years, and he put up with it.

To me, he deserves something in return for that.

And so, for that, I gave him my loyalty.

All he had to do was look at me and say, "Shawn, this is what I want,"

and I did it.

[bell ringing]

[Michaels] On that night, he did not want Bret Hart

walking out of that building with the championship,

and I made sure that happened.

[Prichard] Day of, I was told that it was gonna be a schmoz finish.

Everybody was gonna get involved. We were gonna throw the match out,

and we'd figure out what to do afterwards.

[Hart] A schmoz is a big brawl with a bunch of different guys,

and the referee just throws it out.

No one really wins or loses, and it was like, "That works for me."

But WWE had been screwing wrestlers in different ways for a long time.

I knew about Wendi Richter, so I didn't trust anything.

Never took my eyes off Shawn.

If he wants to make this a real fight,

we can make it a real fight anytime he wants to.

I will fight him to the death.

-[announcer 1] Look out! -[announcer 2] Shawn Michaels is in.

[Hart] If you watch that match, it's a great match.

[announcer 1] It's a down-and-dirty fight between guys that hate each other's guts.

[crowd cheering]

[Hart] Eventually, Shawn puts me in the sharpshooter,

which is my finishing move,

and he, in fact, puts it on wrong.

If you see it, I correct Shawn while he's doing it,

and he switches it and puts it on right, and then turns me over,

and I can see the timekeeper, and I see Vince yell at him.

I'm yelling at the timekeeper, "Ring the bell, ring the bell."

Even though Bret never tapped out.

And he won't ring it. He's, like, stunned. He's like...

And then I see Vince snap at him, "Ring the fucking bell!"

Ring! Ring the bell, ring the bell!

[bell ringing]

[rock music playing]

The bell rings, and I'm screaming on the headset. "Why'd you ring the bell?"

Oh shit!

And I can feel it.

Everything is coming to me now. Like, "They did it. They did screw you."

[McMahon] I wanted to be out at ringside so that he would know what happened,

and I took back what was mine.

Bret obviously didn't like that.

When you have a match as hard as I was wrestling,

you get a fair bit of froth in your mouth.

I leaned over, and I spit on his face.

I got him bullseye.

[McMahon] Right into my eye.

That was gross, but nonetheless, I thought, "Damn, how did he do that?"

[crowd clamoring]

[Hart] Then I went out and broke all the monitors

and smashed all them to pieces on the floor.

It was just chaos.

Bret writes "WCW" in the air.

[Hart] It's hard for people to imagine how mad you can get

when you get betrayed like that on national television

and, in a lot of ways, made a fool of.

My brother Owen was very calming.

He goes, "It wasn't right, what they did. That was wrong."

"You have all the respect of everybody in the dressing room."

That kind of stuff. He was very...

[clears throat, voice breaks] ...consoling to me at that time. And...

[exhales emotionally]

Fourteen years, I've given Vince McMahon 100% every night.

I've bled for him, took front turnbuckles at 100 miles an hour.

I've given him Christmas mornings with my kids that never happened.

I've never missed a show. I've given this guy everything I got.

I couldn't have given a man more than what I gave Vince McMahon.

None of that meant anything when Vince screwed me that day in Montreal.

[crowd clamoring]

[Hart] When I walk back to that dressing room, I'm ready to kill him.

Like, kill him. Beat him to death.

Shawn, you weren't in on that?

[Michaels] No fucking idea. I didn't know, God as my fucking witness.

He came up immediately and said, "Did you know?"

I said, "Hand to God, I did not."

Vince was so adamant.

We had to absolutely swear that we knew nothing about this.

He was like, "I don't care who asks you, you bold-face lie right to them

and say, 'I knew nothing about this. This was a Vince McMahon call.'"

I swear to God, I knew nothing...

Yeah, swear to God all you want, but someday, God is gonna strike you down.

It was chaos in the back, and people everywhere were freaking out.

Just remember, someday, Hunter, what goes around comes around.

I remember being just so pissed that they did things this way.

I think Vince was in a panic mode, like,

"What can I do to stop this rebellion right now?"

I felt like, in a strange sort of way, because Bret and I had this relationship,

I felt like I sort of owed Bret something,

uh, because from his standpoint, I'd double-crossed him.

[man speaking indistinctly]

Vince said, "He's gonna want to hit me, and I owe him that."

[Levesque] I can picture him walking in that locker room in Montreal.

Everybody else fired up, everybody else emotional.

I leave the room, 'cause I don't wanna watch Vince get punched.

[Calaway] Finally, Bret gets up, walks across the room.

They all kind of meet.

I walk over to his locker room, hands down,

and Bret hauls off and, man, he hit me so hard.

Right in the temple.

There was no, like, "Vince is gonna give me a shot."

I don't know where they get that story, because that is such a bunch of bullshit.

It was Vince and me came at each other,

and we actually tied up like a wrestling match.

Everybody's ready to pounce on me as soon as we grab each other,

and I remember going, "The only way I can get a shot in,

one shot, maybe, is an uppercut."

And I came right up between Vince's arms,

and it was like, um... You know when you hit the bell and the thing goes up?

To this day, I have no idea how the punch got through.

He was out cold like a starfish.

-Drilled him. -[Julia] I'm proud of you.

They're over there.

-As hard as I could. Knocked him out. -[Julia] I'm scared.

Probably the best thing I ever did, and he deserved every bit.

[Prichard] Vince did get seriously hurt, I mean... [chuckles]

Vince had, you know, a big, nice shiner.

[McMahon] That night, I'm limping around,

and, like, "Oh my God, stars are all over the place in terms of my head."

Pretty good concussion.

I felt bad. I felt bad for Bret. I felt bad for Vince.

Vince didn't wanna do that, but he had to do what's best for business,

and that's what he's always gonna do.

[McMahon] That was the Montreal Screwjob, as it was called,

and, to this day, I don't regret any of it.

Things just got real, and it gave me a whole different perspective

for the business.

[Levesque] The Montreal Screwjob was like a moment in time

where you can see the shift.

You know, it's like a land mass moving.

You don't see it, but then there's a big earthquake

and it moves, and you go, "Ooh, I saw it."

[clamoring]

It, like, shifted, and there was a... a seismic change.

The real-life event that happened,

the dispute with Bret and the controversy afterwards,

led to the birth of a Mr. McMahon character

that became one of the most hated characters

and most beloved characters of all time.

[crowd cheering]

In the midst of chaos, a lot of times, genius comes out of it.

Is this the final nail, so to speak, in World Wrestling Entertainment?

Au contraire. We're just getting started.

[tense music builds and fades]

[closing theme music playing]