?Reported by Adam Martin of WrestleView.com

On Thursday, June 9, 2005 at 2:23 AM EST

Jimmy Van of JimmyVan.com sent in the following recap...

I recently spoke with former NWA President, now WWE consultant Bill Behrens. It was a 90-minute discussion about a variety of topics including ECW's "screwing" of the NWA, working with WCW, AJ Styles, Matt Hardy's firing from WWE, and lots more.

Part one of the interview (which is 26 minutes in length) is now online at JimmyVan.com in Windows Media and Real Audio formats. You can also listen to a five-minute preview clip of the interview in Real Audio format at this link:

http://www.jimmyvan.com/audio/behrens/part1/behrens-051905-clip1.ram

Here is a text transcript from this portion of the interview.

JV brings up Bill's background in television syndication.

"I'm lucky nepotism came into play but hopefully I actually did something good," Bill said. He said his dad Bob Behrens was in TV syndication for years, and he and Bill's mother went into business doing a children's television show. His dad asked Bill to help him at a programming convention in Atlanta, and people suggested to Bob that he have Bill syndicate the show. So Bill went on the road selling the show, and started working with Universal Television, who offered him a full-time position in television but turned it down. It later became difficult for "independents" to succeed in the syndication business because it became a bigger business, so Bill ended up skewing towards wrestling.

You've got your own company now, Show Business, Inc. And you've worked with a variety of wrestling companies including USWA and Smoky Mountain. What was your first wrestling relationship, was it through your dad's company?

Bill says it wasn't with his dad because his dad hates wrestling, as does his mother and the rest of his family. "The very first person I helped was the infamous Eddie Mansfield," he said. Eddie had a promotion in Florida, and Billy and Bart Gunn started out there and Rob Van Dam was down there, and he helped Mansfield get on TV. He said he got the programming on the Prime Network, which became Fox Sports Net.

You also did syndication for WWE back in the day...

Bill said that came through Jerry Jarrett and the USWA. He said he had written a letter to a wrestling newsletter, "just cutting a promo basically, sort of like Cornette in writing," about one of the Crocketts, who had done a high definition TV taping in Texas, and this was like 15 years ago. "High definition still isn't anything. You know, it's nice, but not that many people have it. And it was supposed to be the standard you know, we were all supposed to be using it by now, it was the wave of the future, but nobody really wants it that much because it's too freakin' expensive. Which is what anybody with a brain would have known, but everybody thought it was gonna go better than that. Well this guy 15 years ago is shooting in high definition television and paying Sid and Tommy Rich and a whole bunch of other people really good money to do a taping that would go nowhere. And nowhere fast. Nobody would watch it, only the Japanese could even watch the dang thing at the time. But they were gonna do it, and as with all promotions they did the magical, 'And we're going to bring it as a pilot and we'll get on TV and we'll be big.' Well, not so much. Because 90% of the people who get on TV fail because TV puts them out of business because of the expense of it. But I wrote all this stuff and I ranted and I said, 'And wrestling stars are only stars if they draw money and they should be paid based on what they draw,' and stuff like that." Bill said Jerry Jarrett called him after reading his letter in the wrestling newsletter, and Jim Cornette called him after that. Bill said he went in with Jerry in theory to put Jeff Jarrett into the promoting business, but Jeff didn't want to be in the promoting business at that time, so the deal they'd worked out (where they would pay Bill a fee) wasn't becoming good for them, and wouldn't work out anyway because Jeff would eventually become what he became, a wrestler in WWE. Jeff didn't want to be a promoter at the time anyway. Jerry suggested that Bill take their show from Memphis on the road, and if he gets a deal, cool. "We started doing that and we were making minimal money, it was really nothing but the exposure was pretty good. And Jerry was consulting to WWE at the time and we cut a deal basically where they distributed the program, kept the commercial time and paid me a fee. So Jerry Jarrett got me paid."

Eventually the deal with WWE ended, and apparently it was pretty sudden and you found yourself having to find programming to fill a hole pretty quickly...

Bill said there were two moves. First Jerry Jarrett signed a deal to consult with Eric Bischoff when Bischoff came into WCW. "The end result of that, depending on whose version but based on what I know, the end result of that was the angle of the nWo vs. WCW which was what Jerry wrote about doing because it was very similar to something he had done when his promotion had taken over USWA, and Eric Embry had climbed and pulled down the World Class sign and put up USWA for the new company." Behrens explained that it was the same concept of having an invading company try to come in and take over with other established stars. "Other people have claimed they have credit for that... from what little I know, Jerry Jarrett had at least some input into that," he said. Bill said when the WWE deal ended, USWA went out of business, and Bill launched Music City Wrestling with Bert Prentice and started their own distribution.

Jerry Jarrett's the one who hooked you up with Bert...

Bill said he met Bert because when he worked with the USWA, he was asked to make sure Prentice didn't get on TV in Nashville, so he called the station and told them "some truths" about Bert. "So my first experience with Bert was I was the guy keeping him out of the business," he said. Bill said Bert was brought in by the dueling factions of the USWA at the end, with Larry Burton, Jerry Lawler, Dutch Mantel, Bill and others on one side, and people they'd brought in on the other. Bert was brought in to promote house shows, and Bill says he and Bert didn't talk at all. But at the final show taped for the USWA, none of the other people were allowed at the TV station except Bill and Bert, so that's how they got to know each other. When USWA ended and Bill needed footage for the TV timeslot, Jerry Jarrett told him to call Bert. They used Prentice's video library to produce the show, then Bert bought some airtime and they created Music City. They ran shows as Music City for a year, year and a half until they changed it to NWA Worldwide. "We ran Friday and Saturday nights at the (Nashville) Fairgrounds and would draw 200-300 on Friday and 400-500 on Saturday, every week, which is remarkable."

With Music City, aside from heading up TV did you have anything to do with the product itself?

Bill said Bert decided to have him come in and work as a heel, and run as many of the live shows as he could get to while Bert worked the box office. "Bert is one of the best small time promoters, and I mean that in a positive way... in the business. He can go in, and promote a town, and will make money. He's been a survivor that way. And while not everything Bert would do is what I would do, what he taught me was invaluable. What Jerry Jarrett taught me was invaluable. Without it I wouldn't be in the business, I wouldn't be able to survive."

Eventually Music City transformed into NWA Wildside...

Bill said it was a weird transition. "We ended up getting the North American Title from the WWE; Jim Cornette got it to me. We became NWA Worldwide and for a brief period, we developed... we had The Hardy Boyz for half a minute before they went up. And Shane ("Hurricane" Helms), Shannon (Moore), Christian (York) and Joey ("Mercury" Matthews) became our Badstreet Boys and we ran a while like that in Nashville but we had TV in Atlanta. The TV in Atlanta was seen by WCW which led to Shane, Christian, Joey, those kids being signed and two of them went on to be two-thirds of Three Count... because Jimmy Hart saw the show and saw we were doing like a, not a boy band thing with them but we were presenting them like a boy band. And then he just made them a boy band, which was a great idea. We were on TV in Atlanta and other people that were promoting in a small town in Atlanta saw the TV, I was promoting shows in two or three towns every week, just doing spot shows. I wasn't doing TV because we had Bert's TV. They came to me, they said blah blah blah, TV, blah blah blah, arena. And I went up and we ended up cutting a deal where I transitioned the TV distribution to what became NWA Wildside." He said there was a company there called NCW that had been there six, seven, eight months and were doing pretty well. He said it was a product that worked in the area because they'd never had wrestling. So Bill went in and changed it into a wrestling company built around television. "Not necessarily with the feeling that TV was gonna draw a big crowd, but rather we were doing it to create a TV product." Bill said they would end up at 300 episodes since NWA Wildside TV still has some footage in edit.

There were a lot of names that came through; Shannon Moore, The Hurricane, Ron Killings, AJ Styles, etc. Did you see potential in all of these guys at the time, or did any of them surprise you?

"I'm a very bad promoter. I'm decent at getting over stars. But that really means what I am is an agent, and I'm fairly good at recognizing somebody with talent and helping them get a little bit further. Some people I've had the privilege of helping have gotten very far. AJ who I manage would be an example. Chris Daniels I only came into late, but he's gonna become a huge star. But guys like Jimmy Rave, and guys like David Young, and a bunch of the kids that have worked with us over the years have been able to break out because of how we developed the system at Wildside. Again it was based on TV and exposure. I didn't pay these kids much of anything. But I told them that if we were successful, we were going to make other people believe that they were talented because they are. I honestly believe the locker room we've developed over the years was the best there is. And it's proven when you look around at the cards and look at the major promotions and you will see not a few but... TNA a huge number of our guys and any of them former World Champions." Bill mentioned Killings and AJ as examples, and also mentioned Abyss as a former Wildside Champion. He said that his guys also work for FIP in Florida, or Ring of Honor or IWA Mid-South. "The promotions that... while they may not draw every time as well as they'd like, they're putting their product out to a wider audience as best they can. And that's what develops stars," he said.

You guys were the developmental system for WCW at one time.

Bill said it was a weird thing. "There was a mix-up that caused the Nashville area, Bert, to lose a development system. At that point they didn't know if they were gonna continue it, or whether they were just gonna give up, and at this point WCW didn't know that it was going out of business, so they were looking to continue. They went up and looked at Les Thatcher's system which has developed some great people, and they came down and looked at us. I think we won because of how we did what we did, but I also think a little bit of it had to do with the fact that one of our top feuds at the time was AJ Styles vs. Air Paris. And while Air Paris made it briefly and didn't fulfill his real potential, and he and I talk about that... their feud, a bunch of WCW executives saw, it ended up with them getting signed, and two or three other people out of the building were signed, but when they saw them and how we were programming them, they liked it. So we ended up coming to an agreement, they decided to do something with us, and we were the development area until they went out of business."

You were named the VP of the NWA Board of Directors...

Bill said Jim Cornette had been courted for years and had never really joined, and when he worked with Cornette, Jim decided not to join and Bill agreed. Bill was then approached by Howard Brody when he and Dennis Coraluzzo showed up on WWE TV and did the NWA angle with the Rock 'n Roll Express, the New Midnight Express, Dan Severn (Bill's champion at the time), etc. "Brody came back and said, 'Okay, what about now?' ... I've always been a mark for the brand, I grew up in Florida... I'm a mark for the NWA." Bill mention Gordon Solie and how he used to put over the NWA as the largest sanctioning body in professional wrestling. "I'm sold on the brand, I just didn't know if it could do anything for me because it had no real visibility at the time," he said. Bill said he joined out of Nashville, he went to the first meeting, and they decided to make him Vice President. "It ended up every year, I got voted Vice President for like three years, then there were some grumpy people, and I was voted back into the Board, and then removed from the Board, and then I was brought back in, and then I was made President. And then I was removed as President, and I was voted back on the Board, but then I quit, and that's where I am now."

Back in 1994, ECW was affiliated with the NWA, then they did the big show for the NWA Title, Shane Douglas won it, and then he threw it down and declared the ECW Title a World Title.

"It was a good spot for Paul (Heyman), he took real good advantage of that, he took Dennis Coraluzzo for a ride on that," Bill said. "And that's entertaining because Dennis was a guy that was the most honest crook I've ever known. He's passed away and God bless him. But he would literally tell you he was going to try to take you, and challenge you not to do it. And you had to respect the guy for that. The boys all loved him because he took care of them like a million dollars. But Dennis was a true carny. He would go out and he'd try to work anybody, and that was the one time he got worked big time. He got totally screwed. And Howard was just along for the ride at that point. That was a Dennis thing because that was a Jersey/Philly thing. Everybody there... Tod (Gordon) and Paul... it was a whole big personality thing because Dennis was doing his thing across the river, they were doing their thing there. This was like the olive branch, NWA blah blah blah angle, and they (ECW) used it as a way to create their brand. Brilliant in terms of execution because Dennis, who was rarely caught off guard, was totally caught off guard."

The complete text transcript, as well as the audio version of this portion of our interview with Bill Behrens - in which he also talks about the NWA?s conflicts with WCW and WWE, his running joke with Jerry Jarrett and more - is online now at JimmyVan.com.

And stay tuned for part two of our exclusive, detailed interview with Bill Behrens!