ESPN Classic

And there's people saying, that's it, I'm done, I'm out.

And I always respond with, oh, yeah? What are you watching? Like, you watching old ESPN Classic games? What are you doing with your time if you're not watching these games?

And that's why I said it's a tough watch, because I'm going to watch it, but it's a tough watch.

I'm like, why?

Eric Bischoff had struck a deal with Fusion Media Ventures, a venture capital firm that was ready to commit to financing the deal and the rebooted promotion.

They were a legitimate operation, having founded the Classic Sports Network in 1995 and sold it to ESPN in 1997 for $175 million dollars.

WCW, as promised in an advertisement laid out in the penultimate issue of the official magazine, had set a name and date for the relaunch live on PPV, The Big Bang, May 6th, 2001.

The new WCW was said to be built around Goldberg, who had been pitched detailed creative plans at a high level.

... fooled by that one, not [laughs] by any stretch of the imagination.

Coming up New Year's Day on ESPN Classic, catch the entire countdown of Sports Century's 50 Greatest Athletes, from Chris Evert all the way to Michael Jordan.

It's the greatest North American athletes of the 20th century.

Sports Century's coverage begins Saturday at 7:00 Eastern and runs continuously all the way through Sunday evening.

To order ESPN Classic, dial 1-800-CLASSIC or call your cable provider.

UI2 compliant? [laughs]

I'm not sure.

Certain things from that era certainly do, like things about the Orioles of that era certainly do.

And I still can't believe the fact that the Tyson-Douglas fight, which, Andrew, at your age, you may or may not have even seen it on ESPN Classic or wherever the hell they show that fight now.

um but i i i absolutely love that fight i probably watched it 50 times over the years and it still seems like it was yesterday the big humiliating thing or or you know yeah it's kind of humiliating in terms of age is that that fight was in tokyo japan and the very next day also in japan rg3 was born the very next day And it's like, really? So it makes you realize that experiences that you don't share with a lot of other people on Earth anyway.

For sure.

Mm-hmm

... "This can't be so," right? And I was, you know, had to check the channel, make sure I wasn't watching ESPN Classic or anything like that.

[laughs]

I didn't know that mid-season weeks, uh, games started, right? So DP, I had-

And there's quite a few things to watch in this episode.

There's an ESPN classic.

There's a Lawrence Weld.

There's a Get in the Cage, which is a really special update feature.

But it opened with Lawrence Welk, so no political cold open.

And then a really good monologue that Millennium and Simon Rich wrote.

And then ESPN Classic and then Knights of the Realm.

It was just like immediately the shape of the show was just good times start to finish.

Ha, ha, ha.

It's like watching ESPN Classic.

It's like watching Michael Jordan at the peak of his powers, watching that.

And it's like for somebody who may listen to the music but not understand the magnitude of the star watching a concert, drives it