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Hey everybody, welcome to Beyond the Bell. I'm Andrew Zarian. Happy Tuesday morning, everybody. 10.30 a.m. here on the East Coast. I'm tired today. Holy moly. This shirt is way too tight on me. Do you see this? MG, my producer, I'm putting you up here. This shirt is way too tight on me. I apologize. I was sleeveless today, and I got a message. Hey, it's September. Don't you put your sleeves back on? And I'm like, you're absolutely right. I got to put my sleeves back on. So I'm wearing an overly tight shirt. No rules said that. You know what? You're absolutely right. There are no goddamn rules about that. A lot to talk about today. Rich is not here. Yeah, I do a wrestling show. No sleeves needed, dude. Rich is not here today. He was at Disney all weekend. And he is exhausted. He needed another day. I think he got back yesterday. And he's like, dude, I need another day. I said, don't worry about it. We're going to do a Q&A episode today. I know a lot of you guys have questions. A lot of you gals have questions. We're going to talk about it. You could ask away. We'll bring it up. If you super chat it, we'll go to the front of the line. Already we got 10 bucks here, which is wonderful. Joe Pearl will be joining me in a little bit for a few minutes. Just to shoot the shit a little bit. Your very own Joel Pearl from In The Weeds. But let's go into this, huh? Fightful Select just put out a big, big story on their Patreon. Head on over to Fightful Select and subscribe. I'm a Fightful Select subscriber even before I joined Fightful. I'm still paying and I'm part of Fightful. Isn't that unbelievable? Is that how it's supposed to work? I'm paying for Fightful. You know, I like this before. Hey, baby. Listen, dude. I still pay for a observer. You know why I pay for a observer? I don't want to break my record of how many years I've been a subscriber. That's why. I think I'm at like year like, I don't know, like 15. I've been reading the observer for like 20 years. I had like a Dutch uncle that was a subscriber and he would bring me the old issues. Wild stuff. Let's talk about this. Last night, John Orand at Puck reported the A.W. media rights deal with WBD. You know, it's interesting because this is pretty much what we've been saying for months now. But a couple interesting notes here and I will mention, I will talk about it. I should have gotten Sean on this. You know what, Jeff in the chat room, shouldn't it be tax deductible? Yes, it should be. It's a work expense. Definitely tax deductible. Let me see. Let me pull this up. All right. So it looks like it's a four year deal. This is according to John and listen, I have no reason to doubt John's reporting here. Okay. I will say that and you left the key thing out of this copy and paste M.G. Oh, no, there it is. Okay. Now I see it. Never mind. Okay. I just like to blame you for all my, all my issues here. It looks like it's a four year deal, three year guarantee with a one year option. Okay. Very realistic. That is a very realistic term. I don't, I can't a hundred percent confirm it. But that's what it seems like it is. I was told four. I was told five. So here you go. Here's your four years. Orand says it's a hundred and seventy million per year. And it's, it's apparently the ballpark. So give or take, right? And I think that give or take has to do with whether or not it does this include the pay per view structure does this not include max does this not include other, you know, possible distribution fees that they're going to be getting. That is the number that we've all heard. I've never once reported a reported number. Let me just state that because I want to give credit where credit is due. I've never had a solid number. I've heard the same numbers that everybody else listening to the show listening on, on X has heard. Okay. It is varied from a hundred and twenty five million all the way to, you know, two hundred million dollars a year. I, I don't know the number. Uh, I, I mean, that is a healthy number for sure. That is a number that gets them over that hurdle. They do become very profitable at a hundred and seventy million plus a year, right? And this is an including international content deals that they have. There's a lot of good opportunities coming up, especially in India and in the UK with WWE going to Netflix. This opens up some key partners for them. If they're looking on, you know, increasing their international presence onto better stations. He says, aw will air on TNT, TBS and true TV twice per week as part of a strategy to make a w true, to make true TV more sports based, um, TNT, TBS, a hundred percent. I was told that I have not seen or heard anything regarding true TV, but, you know, if they are using true TV for replays, that is a great idea. You know, I believe the plan for true TV currently is that they're going to go sports based for prime time programming. There's a lot of time to fill during the week. I have not heard true TV. It's very possible though that could be part of the strategy to get AEW in front of people. You know, originally there was a, a, I mean, part of the concept was to replay AEW on TNT and TBS. That was something that was, and I believe they did it a few times. Didn't they early on, MG? I think you're right. Yes. Yeah. I think my guest is here. Huh? Let's see this handsome, handsome boy. There he is. Joel Pearl. Everybody. Long camera. Are you on the wrong camera? I'm on the wrong camera. That's how good I am at this job. They're so good at this job. You're on the wrong camera. Joel, Joel's going to be joining me here while my producer tries to get him in a double box and unzoom him because he seems like he's a little zoomed here. This is why I need to change my camera. This is why you need to change your camera. I'll fix it. Don't worry about it. So we're talking about the deal. I don't know how much you call it on to this, the John Orand story that dropped. For your deal, right, three-year guarantee, one-year option. Most likely the option is taken. It's around 170 million. That's the ballpark. And I think some of that has to do with the fact that the deal is incremental. Every year, there's some sort of increase, a lot of these deals. I don't know that specifically. I'm just saying based on how TV has worked over the last, you know, especially sports programming, the true TV thing is very interesting to me because I was told that there would be a simulcasting portion of this TV deal for AEW months ago. I made a post. This came, I mean, from a pretty high up and I confirmed it with both sides that what was in play was essentially what the NBA was doing, where you would watch it on TNT or TBS and then it would also simulcast on the max app. The next five years of cable programming is going to be fascinating. The days of linear are dropping. Do we have drill here? I could do a side-by-side. There we go. Look at that. That's good. I could do a side-by-side now. I could have Joel's beautiful face on my screen. Okay. Let me make it this so far of the deal of this of this report. So I'm just catching up on it. It's been a bit of a busy morning and I was reading a bit of the pucks stuff and I read a bit about what was on select. Listen, the deal is the deal is fine. It felt like what, Tony wanted five years and then, sorry, WBD wanted maybe three years. So this is a good in-between doing at least four, right? You were doing three plus an option here. The content is fine. The true TV stuff, obviously, has people talking. How do you do it twice a year? Is that a recap? Joe, is that a TV? I believe it's going to be, I believe it's going to be a replay. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. That's what I'm, I mean, listen, something could have changed, right? If AWS airing on TNT, TBS, and true TV twice per week, I mean, listen, I, I want to get to that speculation on what that could be, right? Because there's another element to this. Sure. The announcement of the deal could come as soon as next week. That is very interesting to me that he said that, okay? I was, I've been told that every week, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, it's not a hyperbole. I'm not exaggerating every week since I said the deal is signed, which I believe it was signed the weekend of all out, right? That's when I said that the deal was done. I was told it could happen the following week. It could happen the following week. So I think right now what, what that really comes down to is PR doing all their work and scrambling to get this I have, I'm, I'm, I think they need to get marketing, they need to get PR, they need to get their sales team, they need to get AW, they need to get the network ads, they need to get everything in line in order to announce this. And I think that's where we're at. It's whenever everything is in line, they're going to announce it. So you know, next week is Grand Slam. That's a big week. They could announce it during then. I don't think it's going to be some nothing announcement. I think this is something that, you know, variety or the Wall Street Journal or somebody is going to have a big piece and they're going to publish this talking about, you know, how great this is. They will be the second most successful pro wrestling company ever after WWE, which was expected. I mean, they already are, you know, they're about there. I mean, they're going to surpass nitro next year. I mean, they've got a super chat. Let's see. Let me see where it is. Okay. Glassdoor Gamer. Thank you for all your updates. The last year plus about the TV deal, do you see Tony Khan also investing more of his money with this deal? It could be good timing for it considering the infrastructure needs. Yeah, I think, I think that's a really big possibility because now you're seeing the McCash flow is positive. That's a lot of money. Is that double what they're getting? Is that close to double? Is that one? I mean, I don't, I don't know the exact number of what they're getting, but here's, here's the other element here, right? Max. Max is the other element. AEW will be on Max. Okay. I will say that pay per views will be on Max. I do not believe it is exclusive to Max because of a number of people I've spoken to, especially in the cable world. They will be, I mean, I think they're just going to have it everywhere still, but Max will be what they market, which makes all the sense in the world. So keep it on triller, keep it on YouTube or wherever international partners you have and then Max is in addition to it. I even think, I even think cable providers, I think they're going to stick with the cable providers. They're not dropping spectrum. They're not going to do that because part of it also has to do with certain pay per view providers having an outlook for next year and they're on that outlook as to shows going on. This was as of two weeks ago, again, things could change rapidly things. You know, the other thing is the other broadcast partner that AEW is looking at, right? What was a wording he used? He used a very specific wording here. He says AEW is pitching an additional package to broadcast networks, last, when we reported the Fox story, I had to put an asterisk there because I said, I don't know if it's verbiage, like internal verbiage from Fox that people are saying, well, oh no, it's Fox. I don't know had their lingo works. You know, it's like saying, you know, oh, they're on Turner. Turner means WBD. I don't know what the internal lingo is. So I can't determine if this is Fox National, if this is FS1, if this is something else. I'll tell you, if they're looking at Fox as a as a national platform, they can not put a sea level show on there. It can't be a rampage, but you don't want to watch rampage at seven o'clock on a Saturday night, you know, and then go into and then go into collision. Sure, I mean, Jeremy and I talked about this as well on on in the weeds. How do you how do you maximize on the amount of hours of content AEW has? If rampage was originally supposed to be that quote unquote third hour of dynamites and I don't necessarily mean sequentially, you should present it as such that rampage flows storyline wise into dynamite, which or vice versa, which they do a pretty good job with. If you add collision at two hours and you add maybe a third hour, does that kind of work together as well collision and dynamite are the problem is they don't connect. So yeah, if there is an additional show, let's say that hits a Fox network. Should it be something that connects everything or that connects some of the things? Should it be a recap show of its own? Should it be a studio show type of presentation? What does a show like that look like? Depends when you put it on interest, you know, if you're doing a like a Saturday afternoon studio show, right? I don't know what kind of impact that would have on you. I don't know if that would be a positive or negative. You know, we got to also remember a lot of people have forgotten how WWE did programming. You know, they had Monday night raw. They had Sunday night heat. They had Jack. They had velocity. They had metal. They had a studio based show, you know, live viral one point. They had shotgun Saturday night that was syndicated. You know, they tried everything they had. It was, I mean, now we're down to like the least amount of WWE shows, right? But forever it was multiple, multiple shows Saturday, Sunday, Monday, you had pay per views. You had heat. You had so much happening. I'd actually argue that there's still there's still a lot of programming that people aren't watching. What do they have now? Well, they got main event. So you've got main event. You've got level up for NXT. That's the Friday night show. NXT level up. You've got a news show, the WWE now or whatever they're calling it. That's the Scott Stanford show. They still do that. I know that I'm missing something, but there are other news magazine style presentation shows that are in the WWE ecosystem that people are just not needing to pay attention to unless you miss the show and you want to catch up and you don't have three hours of your time. Can I, can I give a little shout out to Scott Stanford? My morning drive to drop the kids off. I put on 10, 10 wins because you give them 22 minutes. They'll give you the world. Do you know anything about 10, 10 wins, Joel? It's been a long time since I've listened to New York terrestrial radio. Okay. I still listen to New York terrestrial radio and 92 3 FM, the old Howard station and Scott Stanford is a morning drive news guy. He's great. My kids love him. They want to listen to Scott Stanford. They tell me put, put that man on. That's what they call him. That man. That's the voice. He's got a great voice. I got to, I got to tell you, I listen every morning. I, I think strategizing and doing that is positive for AW. Um, listen, not every show is going to have everything you want, but you need to get guys on TV. You need people present true TV going to be a learning tree. Oh, no, Ryan Lambert's one of our in the weeds regulars. He gets it. He knows what's happening. They should call. Yeah. You got TLC. They should just be learning tree channel. It's just, it's going to be learning tree channel. Oh, what is it? Like a children's show? Is he doing like a kid show? Hi kids. Today we're learning about, you know, cars. Sure. Yeah. It's something else. I'm not going to say it. I'll ask you would do that one, but yes, you can easily do the TLC with Jericho. Yeah. I can see that. The network thing, the network thing is very interesting. I, I don't think it's CW. A lot of people speculating, you know, they don't have an exclusivity thing with CW. I don't think they're going to go CW. But the W does stand for Warner. So that is funny. Right? Okay. Here's another one. Why do you think WBD only wants three years? Are they not confident in a five year investment in AEW seeing the declining ratings or is there another reason? I don't think it's a declining rating. I think it's just out looking the future of cable because it is, it is, you know, I've, my background was technology. I did a very successful tech podcast before this. I, I, I have my background is media and technology and that's how I started and it kind of rolled into this and seen life that I have, but you know, the, the conversation always around cable television and traditional television was when is it over, right? And I've heard 10 years. Oh, we need another 10 years and 10 years it's over. It hasn't. I mean, the 10 years have come and gone, but we've seen the landscape change where the USA network, which was in 90 million plus homes, only a couple of years ago. Now it's down to 69 million homes and it's that number is dropping beyond the pace that it was dropping at. I mean, it's, it's, it's over. I think it's that five, it's over a 5% drop now. I, I saw one could clarify that I, the last I read it was like a 5% drop year over year. Those are astronomical numbers of people cutting the cord. So, you know, if you give them $170 million and in year five, you, you're, you're distribution for TNT and TBS is now at fifth, I'm, I'm throwing a just terrible numbers here, right? Cause I'm speculating. It's a 50 million homes. Cause the bottom fell out. That is, you know, that's something that you are now stuck paying a bill for. So I think the simulcasting is interesting. I think the replays are positive because now you're going to create, you know, another way to find a casual channel surfer to stop and look. When pro wrestling is on, people stop. And that's part of the strategy too. You want people to stop and be like, what the hell am I watching? Who is this? And then maybe they watch and maybe they don't. But the simulcasting I find interesting, the max deal I find interesting now, a lot of the questions is, um, how, how are they doing pay per view? I don't know. I, they do not have a pay per view functionality as of today on max. There's no feature that you could, you know, pay per view on a show. Do they bundle it with, you know, the BR live tier? That's also a possibility. Can you get extra 20? Can you get a 20 buck a month subscription from a W fans instead of them paying $50 a month for a pay per view? Cause they will go monthly for the pay per views. That's going to happen. We're already seeing that. They have a show in January, February, March, April, yeah, they have a show in April, right? No, we do this every time, Joel. You'd listen, the next calendar's coming up. I don't know anymore. I don't know. I don't know. They've also moved things around. Remember for 20, 25, so as a result, all in got moved things, things get moved around a little bit as they're finding their footing at they do monthly. Here's another one from Tony Bologna. I'm not a Bologna fan, but I love a good more to Dell. All right. Yeah. I can love a nice super thin more to Dell from North Shore farms here. Andrew, do you think the financial stability AEW's finding will help them build out their back office and production teams? Will they have an AEW tower in the next few years? Yeah, I think it should be in New York. Maybe in Connecticut, maybe on East Main Street, 1281 is up for sale. Yeah, yeah. There is a building in Connecticut up for sale. I mean, that would be hysterical if he bought type of tower in the con towers. I heard there's a Hall of Fame and one of the old elevators you can get. Contour. That'd be fantastic. I yeah, I think they definitely need to fix up the back office. Listen, they've already done that and we're seeing the changes happening, right? Listen, I'm not, I'm not exposing anybody here, right? But I will say for Tony to have people around him that understand analytics, understand what they're doing, which, I mean, Joel, we have a friend, he's very close to the situation there. Yep. Damn guy never tells me a word though, message all the time and he cannot, he does not say anything to me. There are only so many lips that are loose. There are so many, you know what, he, that guy, he does not have loose lips. That's true. Cause I'll go to him with stuff that I know and he's like, I don't know. Nobody told me. That's his answer. Yeah. I'd say nothing. By the way, just go back to the AWS tower kind of quip. Yeah. There's no reason for them to own a physical space in my opinion. This is a company that came to, to their version of prominence during the pandemic when people were by and large working remotely and they were able to find their footing with that. And back on the road, they decided everything gets done remotely, but we meet up once a week or once a month, depending on how involved you are in the process to catch up in person. They've got a pretty good situation when it comes to their like, their work life balance, or at least their, their physical versus remote work situation, at least in my opinion. If I were, if I were in their shoes, I would be pretty happy doing a kind of hybrid work environment like that. Can I tell you something about my opinion on work from home? Remote work? Sure. I hate it. Everybody back in the office. Distracted. No, not for me. Not for me. I want to work from home. I'm fine with that for me. I want everybody else back to work. Right. Get in your ass in the office. I just want everyone to leave me alone and let me do my work in my office. But then sometimes, sometimes I want to go and talk to people, but I can also use, you know, the wonderful world of texting for that. I can send you a random text to three in the morning and just be like, Hey, did you hear this? You'll be like, I'm sleeping. What do you want? I got a message from my wife just now. I've made a huge mistake. I let your brother into my Canva account. Big mistake. Huge mistake. I mean, I'm looking at what she's, that's a huge mistake, just memes and ducks. Yep. That's pretty much it. Um, yeah, I, so listen, the deal is done. It's happened with the, with WBD, the, the network deal or that other deal. I would imagine they're close if they're trademarking a name for a show. So they have a concept built out. They pitched this concept. It's been liked, uh, maybe true. Listen, maybe WBD came in at zero hour and turned around and said, listen, I don't want you going to another network. Again, I'm, this is me speculating. I have no beyond my initial report of last week where I laid out everything with Max and everything. I, I haven't spoken to anybody. It, nothing has changed. Yeah. Uh, Paul Anthony Moss, the greatest name ever, uh, when, when I commit a heinous crime and I got to take off and I got to shave my head and my beard, nobody will recognize me, I'm going to go by the name Paul Anthony Moss. The call you Pam for short, Pam. If a W will no longer be exclusive to WBD with this Mox storyline that's building possibly lead to separate brand show on a different network, I don't, I, you know, if we were talking about a two hour program, then I would say, you know what? That's a real big possibility. I've only been told it's an hour, whatever this other thing is. I don't know if Rampage goes away either. Rampage is not on the deck for WBD. Let me just tell you, there is no, uh, Rampage is not there. So I don't know if Rampage is, is the other product. I don't know if it's like a thing where, you know, we'll give you two hours of content. We'll give you Rampage and something else exclusive to you guys. I, I, that, that's a balance here. Maybe they rebrand Rampage. Maybe Rampage goes away and it becomes shockwave wouldn't be against that. I wouldn't be against it too. Maybe, maybe, because, you know, does it, the, the, the stigma with Rampage, does that go away? If that's the case. Well, you rebrand it and you don't present it as wrestling. You present it as news magazine repackaged as a recap show. You've got two, two hour programs. That's good enough to, to, to our wrestling story based where are you getting your, where are you putting your talent? Ring of honor. I don't have the answer for that. Yeah. Where are you putting all that talent? But there's a lot of talent. But at the same time, like you, you've got to find ways to effectively cycle your talent. And I know that this is something that honestly both companies kind of struggle with WWE and A.W. to a certain degree. A.W. does have a lot more that they've brought in featured and then pulled back for long periods of time. And as a result, people start asking, well, where's this person? Where's that person? That does need to be worked on. I don't know if adding more hours of wrestling television is the answer as much as it is just effectively figuring out, where should my talent be featured? And should I have so many talent under my umbrella? Um, yeah, I mean, that's a great question. Did you hoard talent? Hoard talent. Or do you, do you just get lean? I think now with this deal, I don't think they're going to get lean. I think they're just going to try a lot of new things. Another question, send them our way. Super Chatham, if you would like. MG needs a new pair of bullet club shirts. Is that a knockoff bullet club shirt you're wearing? Okay. It looks it. It looks it. No hot topic for MG. No hot topic for MG. I got it off Amazon. Yeah, that's a knockoff. Thanks. Yup. Great job. Maybe I know the shirt. Oh my God. Let's see. Any other questions right now? Or do we go into the next topic? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So this is something you kind of alluded to where you started talking about when? When is there a deal announcement? And Grand Slam is coming up and I don't know and I'll throw it to you too. I don't know if this is the type of deal that you make a television announcement about. Do you, are you on the same boat or do you think that this is like, no, they should talk about it on TV and make a thing out of it? If I could meet myself and tell you, I would tell you something right now. I think there is a TV element to it. I don't think TV is going to be like Tony. What I do nothing they should do is Tony come out and start screaming that the deal is done. Right. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't think he should do that. No. I would love it. I would get a kick out of it. That would tickle me. Say that for the break in between the shows where he yells about TimeCop and said he can yell about new TV deals. That's fine. You know what my favorite TV movie is? TimeCop. He gets the thing up on the screen. And he puts it up and everybody goes nuts. I wouldn't go that far, but they definitely do a TimeCop gimmick. He needs it like hologram is one and he needs like a time and a judge dread. He needs a judge right in that company. Interacts can come and do the theme. This will make them profitable. This is all positive. Let's see how it plays out. Now a lot of people, I got a message on Twitter, which this was a fascinating question. And we'll talk about grand slam after this. They said, well, now that the deal is going to be done, right, any week or any day, whatever they decide, not done, it's signed, but moving forward, right. They announce it. Will this change attendance in the buildings? I don't know. I think that's a fair question. I think that's a great question. You know, nobody wants to get wants to get behind a loser, right? I'm not saying A.W. is a loser whatsoever, but nobody wants to get behind a loser. You don't want to go to a show that you know, you know, they're struggling. That's how people are. People want to get behind winners. Up there, just getting a deal isn't going to change the actual program. It's not going to change the quality of the storytelling. And listen, I get it. There are more people online focused on A.W. talking about A.W. than other companies. It's like 5,000 people. Right. And a lot of the time, those people who are complaining the loudest are not the ones going to show. They're going to shows are going to go regardless. Present great stories. Present undeniable programming and people will come. I also think they can go with shrinking the venues that we talk about this on in the weeds all the time. The way that you also promote your shows is another can of worms. You mentioned the promotion of shows and getting people on the same page. You can't have like collisions coming to Dayton, Ohio, put Moxley on the page, put Will Osprey, put all of these wrestlers and the only ones on the actual promotional material that show up are FTR. You can't do that. That just doesn't look good because if I'm outside fan, just going to A.W. tickets and be like, oh, they're coming. Oh, Moxley's here. Oh, this guy's here. Will Osprey is coming? I want to go to the show. There's Thunder Rosa. And none of them appear. I'm not happy about this. That stuff needs to be cleaned up. Yeah, that split is hurting. It can, but again, it doesn't necessarily need to. You just need to focus on what you're promoting from show to show or who's going to be at each show. You tell me Jericho's going to be there and I want to see Jericho. Give me Jericho. Whatever it is. Where whoever it is. The collision was not going to be. I mean, I don't know how quickly it changed, but early on, it was not this A plus show. Right. So when I spoke about this, I mean, so much when when I was being told about this, it was WBD really wanted A.W. wrestling on their con on their channels or wherever. They did not want it somewhere else at the time. And they were doing dark and dark elevation on YouTube and they thought, Hey, why don't we just bring it on to a station? And it was going to be something very different. And it turned into this. The ACC and punk and what happened with him and they decided that they're going to split the rosters and it just it really that that was the beginning of everything kind of melting down for them. It was not a good time. So if they could re align a little bit here and make that the secondary show and now they have something else on another network, it could be fun. It could be interesting. I'm I'm not I'm not going into this thinking like whatever they do on this other station is going to be a blockbuster. I think it's just going to be content to put our content and maybe they get a couple bucks and that's like another thing that they could do. Here's a question from Matthew. Could Ring of Honor be true beyond true TV? What collision move nights? I have not heard collision moving nights. I have heard zero about Ring of Honor. If if Ring of Honor gets a deal, that would be the best kept secret in all a professional wrestling. I think more people knew that CM Punk was showing up at Survivor Series with that zero hour information than the people anybody would know about Ring of Honor. That could be that could be the biggest shock. I've never heard one thing about Ring of Honor and again, not saying that in a knocking way. I just have not heard a thing about Ring of Honor and I think that's a mistake. I think there's Ring of Honor should be on TV and it should be presented differently. But who wants that, you know? Do you want a brand that's been dead since 2019? They lost dark and elevation. They replaced it with Ring of Honor and that's not a knock on Ring of Honor. That's just the presentation shifting from one YouTube show to their to watch our OH. Like that is, that's the presentation and then they put on the the pay per views once a quarter, right? Final battles coming up. The big story that people are going to point to is they're going to do Athena and Billy Starks again and it's probably going to be the crowning of Billy Starks other than that. Ring of Honor is just where it is. No other champions are the only champion that's stuck in Ring of Honor is the women's champion. Everyone else explores everywhere else in the AEW atmosphere. Yeah. All right. Do I move on to Grand Slam coming up next week? Are you coming to Grand Slam? Do you want to pay for my flight? It's like $330. Sean's coming. I thought it's like a whole fightful outing. Yeah. I don't know if Sean wants to pay for any more of my travel in the future. Why? Are you expensing way too much? Are you getting first class? No. Jesus Christ. No. That's on my rider. I don't fly business class the lowest. Good for you. I don't fly anywhere. When I'm on a train and I have enough points, I go one way business class and then I slum it on the way back. That's what I do. I want to feel like a big shot coming into town. Yeah. Yeah. Going back. You just want to feel like a loser. No. I'm just going to be a little loser on the way. You know, that's so funny. My wife and I, we talk about the whole time because like when we flew for our trip, I was like, do we book like I, I don't want to book first class for both ways, right? I'm like, do we book it one way? Are we, are we going and being, you know, successful people going and then come back as losers from our trip or do we book it the other way? That's so funny. Uh, I don't think there's a grand slam in the cards unless somebody wants to pay for my, my flight where I can stay. That's easy. I'll just stay on the couch opposite Andrews studio. We got five bucks. Is that, does that say meet on the screen? Yeah, man. That's meet enormous. Oh, that's a legendary name, dude. Fuck legendary person to meet, Normus, five bucks here, a w needs to lower ticket prices in addition to running smaller venues, 4k in an arena that holds five is better than dark crowds and large venues. Yeah, absolutely. But I think it has to do with how much they're paying for those venues. So Jeremy and I, it's scalable. Sure. It is. And Jeremy and I had a very long conversation on in the weeds. I think it was Friday. If you go back, go on our sister channel, Fightful Overbooked and go check that out because we did discuss a lot of this stuff. We did it on Friday because the analogy I made about promotion and Dayton, Ohio, that was coming off of the taped collision. So the ticket prices are actually not that bad right now. They could go down and do like a $10 ticket and they can, you know, cannibalize their market now for future gains. That is a possibility. But right now the tickets are actually pretty affordable. They start as low as 29. They build from there. At one point, yes, they did do $19, $20 tickets, but they, they've also found a way that people, you know, they get the hard cores to buy. And then afterwards, the walkups get, you know, they get the cheaper tickets, whether or not that works, that's up to you and how you perceive your purchases. A smaller arena, smaller venue, 100%, two things get in the way and Tony's talked about this. One is the access to a mailing list, which could be good. It could be not depends what you're, what you think is going to get you into the room. And the other thing is the load in, load out and the actual facilities available at the venues. The bigger venues, the NBA and NHL sized arenas, those are going to give you literally everything you need to put on a large scale production, regardless of how many in the house. I do think smaller venues would look better. Sean has mentioned doing quirky venues for your presentation. I'm down with that, especially for a show like collision, the Arlington residency, that kind of show that you can mess around and have some fun with the way you show your crowds and present your product. That could work. But the ticket prices are, they're pretty good if you start looking, you know, at certain times. Yeah. Well, I'll talk about a large arena. Next week, AWS here in my backyard, literally five minutes away from my house. Arthur Ash Stadium. This is a building that holds about 20,000 people. I was there last week for the US Open. I go every year. I take the children. I did, by the way, I did get, and this is, this is the God's honest truth. Last night, I took, I took an edible and I was watching Raw and Raw looks magnificent, right? And I was thinking, I'm like, you know, couldn't like everybody like when you're, when they're doing, when you're scaling a building, right, like they essentially bring everybody down and they black out the top. Why not have some sort of ability to like block out the side and just come in the building? This is again. And I'm thinking, I'm like, who could manufacture something like that? Something large or like, drape it forward and close in the building from the entrance side. Which I mean, places in my brain, are you, are you saying like moving the entrance forward forward? Yeah. That whole, that whole entrance ramp area just bring it forward and push the ring farther back. So now you scale the building. So you could do that, but I think there's an issue with what amenities might be available. Like fire escapes and emergency exits. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a problem. Glassdoor gamer. Here we go. I work in events and with AEW's production, a production. I work in events. I'm sorry. My eyes are shot and I can't. Would you like me to read it for you? Yeah, please. Because you know, I have to tell you, I have a screen here. That's why I look here and it's quad box. Yes. And I have to do this. Put your cheaters. I'm old man. No, no, I'm not doing that publicly. Glassdoor gamer says I work in events and with AEW's productions, a lot of smaller and older arenas will lose power with their bells and whistles. Yeah. That's a good point. If you're not on the grid and if you're not powerful enough on the grid, yeah, there's a possibility that you get lights out. Like it happened once to them, you know, a few months ago on a dynamite. Yeah. Listen, also, there aren't too many smaller arenas around. It's not it's, you know, when you had a local minor league hockey team or a minor league basketball team or minor league, whatever, it was easier. Those days are kind of gone. Like the days of like the Hartford Civic Center or like one in white planes, like those smaller buildings, they're, it's whatever standing. What about the college arenas? Again, I'm Canadian. So I think they're huge, right? Aren't they big? Well, those are the, I know the stadiums are huge, but there are certain college arenas that are, some, I don't like the chafets arena where they run and some of them are smaller. Okay. So we got St. John's here, right? St. John's basketball. Sure. My wife's an alum, okay here in Queens. I thought at one point I would play basketball for St. John's. Do you know this? I've met you and no, I don't believe that. I'm trying to find the center here. How big is St. John's St. John's? What is this called? Okay. Here's the arena St. John's basketball. It's a college campus holds 5600 people. Perfect. You know what? My kid was christened there, by the way. My kid's christening was on that facility. Could you pack a few 600 people in that vicinity? You know what? I could probably think, but yeah, listen, they, it's 5600 people, you know, they could do smaller college areas, but again, I don't know if it's going to have the bells and whistles, like you said. Of course, you know, you want, you want that LED scoreboard. You want the high ceiling. You want a lot of this and a lot of these facilities can't do that. Not the Rachirena, 20,000 people, right? They went from nearly 20,000 to what was it, 13,000, then 11,000. This year, this is as of yesterday. 41 example. Can I give you something? Yeah. Give me a one to put it on the screen. This is from Nora Sparks. So TNA and Joe, no, the CNA is going to Detroit and Wayne State University and so 3500 capacity arena. Yeah. There's a good example of it. They brought that up because you're a Detroit boy. That's why. Well, it came up and it made me think of it. Do you just write what you guys are talking about? Yeah. Yeah. The Ranslam mystery in a 4,000 dollar in a 4,000 seed venue and they sold it. How many, how many people were at the last show? Because that was, that looked great. So the Texas show, I don't know exactly how much they said it was their largest attendance for the US this year. And it was a pack. They had floor seats. They had risers. So they had a thousand people. That's pretty good. And then they always do the TV tapies the next night and they know what their retention rate is for those back to back nights live versus tapes. But yeah, they're building as well. And that's something that you can do is you start in a smaller venue, you build up because you see that the scale is there and you see that people are coming in their buying tickets and they're showing up. This is the, this is the big concern with people with AW in the way that the presentation has been on television. Yeah. So attendance, we're at 45 93, we'll be at 5,000 by showtime. But that is, you're in New York. I mean, they have run New York a lot more, right? They have been running, actually, no, they haven't. They didn't do a UBS show. They didn't, I mean, they did UBS for a pay per view, right? They did a Nassau Coliseum for a pay per view, they did UBS for a pay per view, which I was there for both. They didn't run any TV at UBS or a Nassau Coliseum, which I find interesting. They ran Newark, which I'm not going to Newark. You don't get a lot of that New York City travel to Newark, especially on a Wednesday rush hour. So they haven't really saturated New York with TV and 4500, and you're in New York, pop, you're New York City, you're in Queens, very accessible for everybody, 4500 people, that is not good. I mean, listen, I'm, I'm there, I'm going, of course I'm going, all right? How could I not? But 4500 people in New York, I mean, you, you, you set up for 5,700. Last year was over 10,000. It's alarming. How many matches were announced before last week? Not many. And that's a problem, isn't it? And the one that was official is now not happening, and it's been changed with something else. The Darby Allen one. Yeah. And this is, this is what, again, this is what Jeremy and I've talked about is there are, and I'm, I'm telling you this, I'm not making this up, and I'm just, I don't want people to misconstrue. I did hear from people who bought tickets to Grand Slam because they wanted to see Darby and Brian. They wanted to see Danielson and Darby Allen. Now they're not getting that match and like they're still excited for the show, but they're a little bummed out that the title match that was going to be on the card and the possibility of seeing a new champion crowd, I'm not saying whether or not that would happen, but just the possibility for some people was enough to get them so excited. And now you're not even getting a world title match. Now you're not even getting international championship match because the international champion is going for the tag titles. There's a lot of stuff that just isn't making the show as big as it could be. And I get that there is some star power and there's some stuff that's happening that historically is bringing people who are, you know, old Ring of Honor fans, like I'm talking about Nigel and Brian, and that's even still a maybe because they haven't officially said they keep saying if Brian is clear, Brian is clear, if you're trying to build drama, that's one thing, but there are also people who are like, what if Brian's not cleared, that stuff can keep people from going. Yeah. If you're not giving us a reason to go and just saying, wait, we're going to get you this week before the show starts in a week, you can't, you can't promote a big show like that. And there it's kind of a victim of having all in two weeks later, all out, two weeks later, grand slam, that you don't have or three weeks later, either way, you don't have much time to get those big shows in order to build the venues ahead of time and hoping for walkups. Because like you said, you look like 5,000, that'll be okay, but that shouldn't be okay. It shouldn't be okay that they find their, their numbers with the walkups, they should be able to tell how many people are going to be at the show before and the things they get tickets now because we're going to sell out. Not, yeah, if you show up on the day off, like we're going to have a respectable amount of people coming because we really like the matches we're putting on. Do better than that. Yeah. Uh, I got a Asian Joe in the chat room says would have been amazing to have famed St. John's alum, Felipe Lopez, one of my favorite, uh, at your child's christening. I watch Felipe Lopez play basketball in a middle school, uh, gymnasium when he was playing for St. John's and everybody thought that that guy was going to be the biggest signing to the NBA at the time. Huge Felipe Lopez fan Asian Joe, what a great 90s reference here. He didn't do much. I think he played for Milwaukee. Right? Is that right? Someone else get you on that one. Yeah. Someone. No, um, no, listen, I, that first grand slam was something really special. I mean, we got Danielson and Omega in a 30 minute, uh, you know, draw and my, so that's the one that my wife came to. That was the first one she came to. And we had just come back from Chicago that year. So she was excited to go to A W and she's like, wow, this is really like something special. And I'm like, yeah, this is something really special. You're in a, that, that building has never hosted anything. Do you know what the other after a W, do you know what the other non tennis event that that building has hosted? It was this year. Is it a graduation of some sorts, a high school graduation? Nope. It was the dog show Westminster Westminster was held at Arthur Ashe and nobody was, uh, what's the word? No one was preempted. No, no, no one was preempted. But you said the first, the first grand slam I came to town for that. I flew in from Toronto and I brought, I brought our mutual friend who now works for a W, a different friend, by the way. And like her and I had a blast there and this was before she officially worked there. This is like, this was a really fun show. That was a really cool show and I wish, I wish that the feeling was there going into the show weeks in advance, not the week of the show. This are a cost to hear a lot of Queens represent a lot of St. John's alums. I went to St. John's and that arena would explode after the intro pyro. Yes, it would. They sort of got to hear your voice and they just flock to it. They hear me. I know. I summon all the Queens boys and girls. That's how it works. Wendy Chu showing up right after this, Cardosa, Cardosa high school graduate, my alum, I've got Alex Cardosa who does our Smackdown post show tweeting out, hey, does Fightful need an anchor for a new show because I would do it. Give me 30 minutes and I'll give you the world and I'm saying, I know what you're listening to right now. Cardosa, I get it. You just need 22. You don't need the full 30, okay? That's true. Yeah. Give it 22 with commercials. I want the ticket tape. I want that in the back. All right. So Arthur Ashe next week, he was going to be at Louis Armstrong Stadium because Forbidden Door was going to be at Arthur Ashe. That was the plan. And that, that did not happen. I don't know why that did not happen. I actually, I'm very curious, I maybe, I don't know. They were shuffling some things around. Maybe it was the Westminster dog show. Maybe you know what? That's, no, no, no, because they, they ran that already. Well, no, I'm saying maybe you bumped the other thing. That's why it happened. Maybe you bumped the other thing. Yeah. Maybe you bumped the other thing. It was a super chat here that was skipped. Do we have it? All right. Oh, we're going to get there. Okay. Put them up. Put them up. Yeah. All right. Uh, Joel, you want to read this one? Uh, Mod Revolve says, "Why are they waiting so long to put tickets on sale for so many events? Uh, concerts are six months while AWS six weeks full gear in world and still not on sale." Um, what does Soberwede do? Well, they just put the Survivor Series tickets on sale last week or the week before. Yeah. And they are seven weeks out. And that's, and that thing, and that thing is probably sold out already or close to it. Pretty close to it. Yeah. They did a really good, a really strong pitch and a really strong sale. And again, the expectation for war games is pretty high and it's Vancouver. They do not do pay reviews there. So there's a, or PLE's there. So it's a pretty big deal for them. Yeah. You know, and I also think a lot of the tickets are scalable. I don't know if that Hertzer doesn't with the VIP packages going on first and group buys going on and then they start trickling all the tickets. I don't, I don't know how that impacts. I mean, ticket, ticket sales, uh, I have a very good friend that was in that business for a very long time and it's all about scalability. You never release everything at first. You wait, you hold off, you release more, you move tickets around. So there's a lot of movement here. The concerts are also different as well because concerts are a batch tour announcement. You know, when you know what is coming to your town, it's well in advance. All these cities go on sale either at the time of announcement or shortly after. And then you got to do the, the pre, the pre show, not pre show, the, the, the big lists, the membership clubs, all that stuff. And then yeah, with, with AWS or with wrestling in general, six weeks out, it's pretty good because they tend to release stuff in quarters. Uh, AW is just, they just put out a whole bunch of dynamite and collision events. Like they, they've announced like all these are going on sale now. So yeah, the six weeks seems to work for them and it works clearly with WWE as well. Yeah. Uh, pull up some more. Let's, uh, let's just go through super chats. You know what? Forget about, forget about everything else. Let's just go through super chats. How about that? Let's do that. All right. All right. All right. There's more. How about that? No. And then, and then let them keep sending them in here. You put on the on sale for like books, Barry this Wednesday, like these are on sale now all the way through October 23rd in Salt Lake City. Okay. Does Eric Bishop ever get tired of being wrong? Um, I, I, you know, I don't, what is Eric's, I don't know what Eric's official stance on this was because I mean, I see a lot of like clickbaity, uh, clips of him, but it's never posted by Eric or, or Conrad, I think it's just clips. I have no idea what Eric's positioning on this is. I couldn't tell you. I don't, I don't listen to it just because I have other things going on and other stuff that I listen to. But by and large, I'm just told he's, he can be even keeled. It's just sometimes the stuff gets clipped out and he tries to make the most engaging thumbnails possible. I was, and he worked in a pro wrestling business for a very long time. It's all about, you know, getting eyeballs. So look, I've done a show with him. Uh, he was a great host, uh, we spoke after the fact, uh, just, he was, I, it was nothing. It was like a very normal, nice man. So, uh, that was my engagement with Eric. I've never had any negative engagement with Eric. I don't know. Listen, I, I think some of it also is, you know, he, he works this up and he makes it interesting to his following because that's what his following wants to hear. But, you know, Tony was able to do something that Eric couldn't or hasn't. And obviously the, the landscape is very different and Eric has a very different philosophy than Tony does. And maybe it's just a matter of philosophy and, you know, Jim Cornette, one of the greatest minds in pro wrestling. There's no denying that articulate, intelligent, great historian. Uh, but I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he says about AW. I just don't agree with it. And my whole stance on this is, listen, I, I'm 40 now. Okay. I'm 40 years old. My taste has changed economically from when I watched wrestling, when I was a teenager, the stuff that I liked when I was 15, 16 years old or 14 years old, sneaking out of my house to go to the yelks lodge to watch ECW. I, I, I don't know if I would tolerate half of the stuff in ECW, you know, would I find it as entertaining? I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I still watch it every now and then. And I'm like, I can't believe I went to that show. And I try to find myself in that stupid, ridiculous building that was oversold. I'm sure there's, I'm sure I was at a, I was at a show where that Tony was at too. I'm sure Tony was out the yelks lodge for something, you guys probably stood next to each other and everything. Can you imagine? Be fantastic. That would be great. He likes my beard. I think, I think that he likes. Oh, here's for Joel Cody. Oh boy. And the never shop impact to a bigger network, uh, TV network. I mean, they own, they own the network that they air on. This is the eternal question. Where does TNA make their money? Where do they make their money? Where and how, uh, latex, they're, they're in the latex business. And they've done some international television meals that have kept them floating there. I'm sure there are other things that are, you know, making them, uh, maybe more profitable than they've ever been. Well, they, I mean, they could. It just comes down to where they see the product growing and what the expectation is for growth. They have ideas. They have plans, doesn't them. They also have a lot of stuff coming up in the next year when it comes, when it comes down to contracts and things that are shifting, uh, in their landscapes. So I don't know. It's a very, the eternal question. How does TNA stay afloat? They are the cockroaches of pro wrestling. And I mean that in the nicest way possible because they have survived everything. Yeah. I, I wish I had more time for TNA. I really do. Well, if you don't every Thursday after the show goes off the air on TNA Impact, we do host a post show here on YouTube.com/pifle. So go ahead and check that out because we don't do two hours. We do usually about one, maybe 45 if there's just wrestling on the show. Make enormous $10 super chat here. Appreciate you. Since we're on, since you mentioned Bologna and more to Dell, I'm a Gaba Gulgai. Now let's crank. Would you do a meat mayhem as a tourney or beef battle royal or multi meat tag? Shout out to beef in ROH. Yeah, there's a man named beef in ROH. He's on the end. He's too very popular. Beef thought I was it, no, Brian Alvarez thought that he was part of the, the bears. I can understand that. Beef bear. Beef bear. Bear beef. Bear beef. Bear bronzer. Bear bronzer. Bear bronzer. He, he's a local guy here. I think I called his match. I think I was involved in something. He was wrestling somewhere and I, and I either called it or helped produce it. Nice people. I like that. He's a, he's a long island boy. Good. Listen, I love a spicy Gaba Gulgai. I love a more to Dell. I love a Pejut, like a nice Pejutto, but very thinly sliced. Nobody wants to eat a chewy thick Pejutto. I'm big on the cold cuts. Hold up. You're 40? Holy hell. I wish I looked like that at 40, you know, I, I thought you were like 32. Oh, thank you. I had my fan. I fan myself here. Drop yourself care routine, sir. I hit 30 this year. Um, well, I, Joel knows my routine at dark lights and no filters steroids. A lot of a lot of performance enhancement drugs. I, I am, I am, I do see an anti-aging doctor. So that, that also helps. And I inject myself daily in the stomach and I do TRT. That's my, that's my anti-aging regiment. My wife does my skincare routine though. She's big on keeping me young. No filler. I can't wait till I start doing fillers in Botox and I end up looking like Mario Lopez. I'm so excited for you to come out with me. That's going to be my face in my fifties. Oh, I want the big massive lips. Hey, guys, I'm an engineering and welcome to Beyond Bell. Don't tempt me, Joel. I know it'll help me. I got syringes right here. My own. Look at you. Do you know what's on my desk right now that I've been playing around with? I'm not even kidding you. I'm afraid. I am. I'm not kidding you. I have bones and syringes. I have plastic Halloween bones and I have syringes. This is CZW live in my studio. Andrew, how do you guys get to monetize on this episode? Oh, you know, they could be fake. They could be from Party City. Nobody knows. All right. What else do we have to give you? Let's throw some more questions up. Does one right? Okay. Yeah. Glass or gamer. Incredible dude. WWE scalpers tickets are starting to decline weekly. They use partners to help distribute tickets. How is gross? PR has slown. Aw does not have these type of partners. Yeah. I think that definitely helps to secondary and third market partners that purchase tickets and they distribute it. I don't know if that's helping. I mean, here's the reality. I think that the product got cold in 2023 and they've had a real difficult time coming back from there. I think definitely the CM Punk stuff turned people off tremendously. I know so many people that were turned off by all of this, but it's been over a year at this point. You know what? We're. I'm just, what are you doing here? What happened to my screen? I got added. I got out of the box. Yeah. You're a quad. I'm big in the quad right now. Oh my God. It's humongous. It's a giant Joel. I can't read the questions now because it's blocking partially. Well, I wasn't reading it anyway because I can't see. They got cold and you know what? The big part of what happened to all those WCW fans, right? It was over and they left. And I think a lot of that happened with AEW. I think a lot of the favorites are gone. Kenny has not been consistently on TV for a very long time. The Young Bucks are not wrestling every week on TV for a very long time. Danielson finally got the title. Moxley's in and out a lot. He's been a lot of injuries. CM Punk left. Samoa Joe's not there. Someone that you built 2023 on. You know, these are a lot of moving parts. Max is not there. He's leaving. He comes back. I think they had a series of unfortunate events that have affected ticket distribution and viewership, but I don't know what the solution here is. It's not doing what they're doing currently and going forward with it. I think they need a shot in the arm. They need a big shot in the arm. Listen, I know what that shot in the arm is, my opinion. Not anything I know verified. You know who I want them to bring in. Well, I've made I've made my case. They have to do it next Wednesday. Oh, I knew I faint like an old Victorian woman. Where is my fainting couch? RJ has to catch me. RJ City will be right behind me to catch me. You should be there to pick you up. You know, listen, I'm making that joke, but they do have potentials for big stories. You know, this Moxley thing I really like. I like how they're presenting it. I think if the hurt enterprises, I think that's the name that they're going by, right? They trademarked it. The hurt syndicate. Hurt syndicate. There you go. You know, they could come in and that could be a hot story line for something. All right, you want to read this one? Yes, I'm from I, bro, or a bro. I think some of AEW's problems is word of mouth. The fastest way things grow is being culturally relevant and it doesn't seem like AEW has great PR. They have they have tremendous people on their TPR team. Adam Hopkins is a is a WWE veteran who's there for 20 plus years. A nice long island boy, Adam Hopkins. Yeah, what does what does PR mean in the grand scheme of things to do? You know what? They don't have and I'm going to say it. They don't have a ministry of propaganda, okay? Yeah. And unfortunately for them, that hurts them. Not having that aggressive, you know, propaganda arm that will constantly beat down whatever the initiative is. WWE has that. I mean, these are, listen, I Chris is an incredible, incredible person at his job over there. You know, you see the memes now and you, but, but he is a, a tremendous arm for that company. And I would say WWE has benefited by having him there. I think, you know, for AEW, they, they may need to get aggressive with their, with their PR and their marketing and how they interact with the fan base and how they're putting content out. I do think that there's a problem with content distribution, especially with social. You know, I don't know one match in Mexico, Jericho did win that man. You know what? Talk about propagandist. They presented, Jericho is the winner of that man. I mean, that is funny. I actually found that hysterical, but I, you know, I think, I think marketing could improve. I think aggressiveness could happen. And this again, this is no knock at anybody else. It just, they need the right person coming up with these ideas for them. You can't sit back and just rely on matches to entice people anymore. That's not going to happen anymore. You can't rely on a John Moxley storyline only to, to bring people back or a max storyline. Do you need so much more to get people to believe this is the greatest thing I'm going to watch? You know what the, the cool thing about this new Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling is that's coming out? Is this a Canadian thing? This is Scott DeMoor bought Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling and his bringing it. Scott and his team are putting on a bunch of dream matches with wrestlers that you know from various companies, including AEW. That is going to work for their first two nights of shows. And then after that, you got to start building the stories that go along with it. And I'm not saying AEW doesn't have stories and I don't like that. I don't like using that, that term because I do think AEW has stories, but I think that there needs to be more focus on putting emphasis on those stories over the, hey, look at this cool match. It's going to feed into whatever we're telling you as the story, I promise. Once the stories become number one presentation, then the matches flow with it. And once that happens, there's so much more possibility and potential for AEW on the growth. Yeah, Sarah says, uh, was it Joe Lanza that said, Nick Khan and Legentiel, Legental, he's not gentle, uh, were sharks in a kiddie pool when it comes to wrestling media. Yeah, they, they are, I mean, I've had conversation with Joel off the record about this stuff. Like I, I know Chris pretty well, you know, uh, he is, this is not a guy from pro wrestling. This is a guy from Showtime boxing and from the zone. Uh, it's a very, the wrestling mentality, like what we think as fans are people that have consumed wrestling and wrestling media, it's not, you're not dealing with someone from the wrestling world. You're dealing with someone from the entertainment world and that is a very different way of looking at things. They look at the big picture. They don't look at the small picture. Also, us as creators, and this is again, we're going to get way too off beat if we go there, but we as creators, we don't have the same protections that other companies might have or that other presentations might have. Yeah. You know, like we don't have a New York Times level of protections from any sort of, it's from any issues mitigating from a lawsuit or threats of whatever or access, things like that. We don't have the same protections. So we do tend to go with the flow and that's not us specifically as not me speaking at Fightful or anything like that, but you see a lot of content creators who are in the rooms. And that's because they're doing something that they love for the sake of their game. Game G.A. I mean, not gain G.A.I. G.A. N. I don't want people to misconstrue what I'm saying. And as a result, like the way that they present their content is typically through a positive lens. But then there are the journalistic folks who present wrestling in a report of style or in a, in a way that's not going to be WWE PR, AWPR's way of doing things or finding out things. Those people are few and far between because those people are unafraid of ramifications that come from this. They're doing it because they have a journalistic background or journalistic want to do this. That's a, again, very different conversation, but there are, there's a lot of nuance that goes into these conversations about wrestling media and how we do things differently than boxing media than we do things in entertainment media. Like it's so different and yeah, we, we don't have a lot of the same things that those other people have. Yeah. All right. Let's do three more rapid fire and we got to get out of here. This was fun. I like doing these Q and A's. I think. All right. Give me one. Oh. Oh, it is Russell ticks. Is this to me? I'm a big fan of Russell ticks beyond, yeah, thank you. My feeling is that they'll comp a lot later. By the way, go, go before I read this. Go and subscribe, Russell ticks on Patreon. Uh, I'm a subscriber. The, the amount of work this person does gathering data every day and putting it out there is remarkable. I mean, that is, that is, I, um, close your ears. I get, I get like a boner for analytics. You know, like I'm a big fan of numbers and spreadsheets. That's all I do. I just scare it's spreadsheets and I try to make, make facts out of, uh, out of whatever I'm seeing depending on how you want it to show. My feeling is they'll comp a lot later. You know, one of my buddies just messaged me. One of my closest friends and he wrote, I have something for your show that no one listens to. He's got a scoop. My feeling is that they'll comp a lot later happened last year's show. My feeling has always been, grandslam should have been a pay-per-view. I agree with you. Grandsom should have been a pay-per-view. It's one of the biggest venues they run in the States. Good show guys. Um, it is a pay-per-view now in Australia, they, I mean, they did do a good job at building that as an important show, which I, I do that that is great, but man, I, you're in New York. You're in the New York market. There's so many ways to get people in your building. I specifically know about this. I know a lot about this. Working with venues all around Manhattan, working with hospitality venues, working with nightclub. I, I, I know how this market works. And if you put the effort in and you tell people, you got to go. I don't, I forget about the match. I mean, we were talking about like the matches, obviously that's a big help, right? But you're in the busiest market. You could sell anything here. It's just strategy. That's really what it comes down to. You need the right strategy to get people in the building. That first year, I'm walking down Midtown. I'm on 37. I'm out of Penn Station. I'm walking all around Midtown. There was stenciled, uh, on the sidewalk, stenciled. A.W. Grand Slam, Arthur Ash. A.W. Grand Slam. Everywhere. It was stenciled all around Manhattan. You had subway banners. You had bus banners. People were talking to me that do not watch wrestling. They wanted to go to this thing. I'm not even kidding. Like, I had people ask me like, who's there? What is this? Oh my God. Oh, Chris Jericho. Oh, Brian Daniels, Daniel Bryan. You know, whoever, the, the CM Punk. People were talking about it. It was a buzz. There's nothing this year. It's another show on the calendar. It's another show on the calendar. Why did they stop? I don't know. Why was Stokely watching tag team DVDs? Oh, I got this one. So, uh, so, so the tag team division A.W. is, um, how do you say hot garbage right now? So as a result, Stokely was, uh, trying to harken back to better times in the tag team division and watching those matches to remind ourselves of a time five years ago when A.W.'s tag team division was in fact the hottest thing ever. Yeah. All right. Give me, give me a couple more. Rapper five, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Broze, Tony Bologna. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. I'm doing the DDP, bro, by the way. Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. He's like a dollar. Bro. Sorry. Bro. Uh, what are the changes W.W.B. by CNN in the next five years? I love what you guys do. Thanks so much. Rich. You want to answer this question? Uh, yes. Yes, I can't even do a rich. I miss you, Rich. I miss you every day. I know Sean does a whole, like nobody, you can never do a 0% or 100%, a 5% chance. I don't expect W.E. to want to buy. When they were in tape acquisition mode and company acquisition mode before the network, yeah, that would have made sense, but now there's no reason. They did want it. They wanted, they wanted the tapes, they, and I, do you remember what the rate for the tapes were? I'm really, I'm really too much. Listen, somebody please tell me if this number is wrong, because this has been etched in my brain, $350 per hour programming, amazing. Does that make any sense, like, am I hallucinating this number? It's not something I have access to, but I don't see a reason for W.E. to want to buy a TNA. It's just, there's no reason for it. They run on different planes. I think the partnership is exactly as it's being presented. Don't expect massive, you know, massive main roster talent or massive NXT stars to cross over, you'll see, you'll see starting this week, if you watch TNA, it's just, it's a lot of the, a lot of the NXT women who are new up-and-comers, getting reps on TV and TNA is offering them that shot and they're working, the NXT is a bigger name than TNA. It's objectively true. Just look at, you look at the ratings that they pull in, therefore, why would W.E. want to buy the product? Why would they, what do they get out of it, other than a tape library that they can no longer use to put on a service, they don't keep up? So, yeah. A good question. Do another one, Paul Anthony Moss asked Beyond the Bell, "If A.W. Pay-Per-Views end up on Max, they are ending up on Max. Do you think they'll be free like WWE does with Peacock?" Seems like it would be a great way to try to build a new fan base, given how good the Pay-Per-View matches usually are. I, that's a lot of money to leave on the table for them, I mean, we tried to do the math on the air. Do you have a calculator? I can get one. Okay. Let's do this. Okay. Give me the numbers. Okay. They do 100,000 buys, right? Let's say, on the low end average, let's just average 100,000 at $50 a pay-per-view. How much is that per show that they're making? That's $5 million. Now, divide that by two, let's say it's a 50/50 split for the Pay-Per-View providers. All right. That's $2.5. Now, multiply that by 10. I'm looking at $25 million. Yeah. Do you leave $25 million on the table? And that's mostly, and again, that's a low end number, right? Some, they have a better split with the provider. Some, it's a 50/50. Some, it's 60/40 for their favor. The other ones, you know, it varies, but do you give up $25 million to $35 million? $30 million? I don't know. I don't, you know, that $170 number, does that include Pay-Per-View? I don't know what they expect. Yeah. I don't know what they expect. I can see them just charging a price, not exorbitant, not $50 for max. It could just be on a tier. The AEW tier. Maybe it includes streaming dynamite like the triller deal, right? Now you get the pay-per-views and you get dynamite streaming and you get, you know, it could be something like that. Again, no idea, purely speculation. So I, again, WBD does not have the functionality for a Pay-Per-View right now. That doesn't mean in January they won't. I don't know. I don't know what they're building out. They do have that BR bundle. They could have a tier for AEW where you get access to all the, you know, everything. I don't, I don't know how they'll bundle that. I've heard nothing on that. Do you think AEW hears one? Hey, what's that over there? Buy bucks. Do you think that AEW would bring back the House Rules event as exclusive max content? I think they could do some, some interesting stuff. They could do that. They could do a special. They could do a real beyond the belt, beyond the belt. I'm pretty sure beyond the belt. No, that's my show. That's my show. The Battle of the Bells? No. The Battle of the Bells? The Battle of the Ports. They could, they could do Clash of the Champion if they wanted to. You know, that was my scoop. Singular Champion. The Beyond the Bell. The Beyond the Bell. You're doing great, buddy. You're doing great. I lost it. All right. Let's do two more and more out of here. I have a twi- Oh, okay. Here we go. Okay. Which one? That produced it like a PwG-style mystery vortex. I mean, that would be awesome. I wouldn't hate it. I wouldn't hate it either. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't hate it at all. Okay. Brian Knight asked, "Will there be a new A.W. video game in the next two or three years? Yuke was awful." I have to tell you, I have a very different feeling about that game. Okay? It was exactly what they promised you. Everybody yelled, "We want no mercy. We want no-" I mean, listen, the graphics were poo-poo, right? Not great. But they gave you that very simple no mercy play. It's a different time. Decades have passed. No mercy was 20 something years ago. Gaming has evolved. You know who loves that game? My son. My daughter. They freaking love it. They play it all the time. Why? Because they're children. My son is seven. Mine are mine. They're a year and a half apart. They play it. They don't even know what they're pressing. And they have a great time. They're laughing. They're dying laughing. Playing that game. Now, is that enough to garner, you know, a great russing? No, it's not. But they put out exactly what they said. It's no mercy. And I think Tony discovered how difficult it is to develop a video game with a partner that doesn't make these kind of games anymore. You know? Yep. Hey, man, I'm still trying to get it on Switch. And I look at it all the time. 39, 90. It's on sale right now on the PlayStation Store. It's like 40% off. Yeah, it's on sale everywhere. But I want it on my Switch because I want to play it on the go and I don't do Steam Deck stuff. I don't know. I don't own a Steam Deck. Sean asks, "When do you guys think Stephanie Vacar debuts an NXT?" When maybe maybe on the, maybe one of these big shows, a Chicago show? That would be interesting. I have an answer. I have an answer. Yeah. I have kind of an answer. Okay, I get it. She supposedly is still in Mexico waiting on her visa. And her Instagram post, she's in a gym working out. And if you look at the background, it's all in Spanish. So I assume that's still to be true. However, if she's working out at a gym in Miami, a lot of, a lot of people there. It's Spanish. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it really does come down to the visa being cleared and getting taken care of. Her debut can come as soon as it's cleared. Yeah. But right now Julia is the play in terms of big presentation with the CW debut in Chicago. That's the match. All right. Let's do two more. I got to get out of here. I'm out of time. Me too. I'm going to turn into a pumpkin. That's what happens with me. I got a test of 12th or anything. No, I have a, I have to go see somebody. Man about a horse? I got to see a man about a horse and I got to change his shirt because it's way too tight on me. Yeah. No such thing with you. I know. I'm not convinced. It's just, it's not just this shirt. I'm not convinced. This is very possible. It's her shirt. Uh, do you think, do you think Ryan asked, do you think A.W.B.D. try to get Daniel Garcia to resign by giving him a taxi cap confession style shot? If it works, if it works, congratulations. Wow. Man, that is, that is something I've never seen in my head. And I, I just want to see him driving and he has the goopoline on, you know, like that stupid, he puts on the goopoline and he's driving and it's all the people in the back. Uh, do you know, still to this day when people ask me, like, what are you, right? Like, cause I'm, I'm racially ambiguous. I'm ethically ambiguous. So people ask me constantly what I am and I tell them and then one of the things is Armenian. They go, oh, like remember that taxi cap confession? Those Armenians in taxi cap confession. I go, why is that representation for any of my people? By the way, fantastic show Daniel Garcia. You know what? Why not RJ city? He did something like that. Did he? The road to, remember, the road to revolution or the road to, he would do the thing with it. The wrestlers get in the car with him and he had asked him questions and then it became H.E.W. Yeah. Uh, he's one of, you know, he's one of my favorite people in wrestling. Um, maybe wait 30 minutes to do an interview where he spoke at me for 30 minutes. Yeah. That's pretty much, yeah. That's great. That's RJ. That's not a knock at RJ. That was just, this is what I get. That's what I want. I want to talk. Do you know what I want to talk to him about? Only a couple of things. I want to talk to him about the nanny. I want to talk to him about Long Island. Uh, I want to, I want to talk to him about David or Cat because prior to, you know, I work on manifestation. I'm big on this. My powers, uh, I can manifest things to happen. It's true. I was manifesting that David or Cat would come over for Thanksgiving. This is the, the, the Thanksgiving before the pandemic and I was working very hard at this and it fell apart. The pandemic ruined it. I got to get it back. This is the year. My Thanksgiving, it's going to be, it's going to be Joey Diaz, Tim Dillon, uh, and David or Cat at my, um, at my Thanksgiving. That's who I want there. I can do it. I want fried turkey too. I don't deep fry turkey. I, I, um, I do this turkey, the open one on the grill. Matchcock, spatchcock brother. I couldn't tell you. Can I say that? Yeah. I don't know. We already got a golden dollar sign in our future. So who knows? Can I say that? Uh, yeah. All right. Are we done? Why not? Guys, this was a freaking blast. Love each and every one of you. Follow me on X at Andrew Zarin. You can follow Joel Pearl on X at Joel Pearl. Yeah, but it's also down on the lock zone now. So if I like you. Okay. All right. You know what, watching the weeds, uh, I'll be back on Friday with Matt men. I do not have a show this afternoon because I have to go to a meeting, but this was a blast. Uh, a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun today. So until next time, bye bye for now. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouthwatering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouthwatering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices plus extra ways to save like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Andrew Zarian is flying solo this week since Rich Stambolian is away! So, this week's episode of Beyond The Bell will be a Q&A with Andrew.
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