The Ultimate Vegas Hangover Cure
We are officially in the post-WrestleMania slump. It is April 24, 2026, and I am still actively recovering from the financial and physical toll of four chaotic days in Las Vegas. Allegiant Stadium was a movie, but the comedown is always completely brutal. When you are burnt out on current hot takes and exhausted by modern booking complaints, the best remedy is a time machine.
I fired up my podcast app, scrolled past ninety different people fantasy booking the rest of this year, and hit play on the newest PWTorch ‘90s Pastcast. Moynahan and McDonald were breaking down PWTorch Newsletter #384. The date on the cover of that newsletter was April 20, 1996. Exactly thirty years ago this week.
Think about where the wrestling business was three decades ago. Shawn Michaels had just lived his boyhood dream in Anaheim. Bret Hart was doing his absolute best brooding loner routine in Western Canada. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were quietly packing their bags for Atlanta. We were standing on the absolute edge of a cliff, completely unaware that the Monday Night Wars were about to drop a nuclear bomb on the industry.
The WrestleMania 12 Buyrate Panic
The main course of this newsletter review is the immediate fallout from WrestleMania 12. Specifically, the hosts dig into the newsletter's analysis of the buyrate for the Shawn Michaels versus Bret Hart Iron Man match. You have to remember the backstage context here. Vince McMahon was basically booking out of spite. He desperately wanted to prove that his smaller, faster New Generation guys could carry the company without the bloated steroid monsters of the 1980s.
He gave Shawn and Bret a full 60-minute canvas in California. The newsletter analysis from back then is fascinating because they were trying to figure out if pure, athletic wrestling actually drew money. The consensus from the dirt sheets? It drew some money, but it was not exactly a cultural phenomenon.
The buyrate was heavily scrutinized because it had to follow the mainstream media circus of Lawrence Taylor headlining the prior year. Shawn winning the belt was a magical moment for the hardcore fans. Unfortunately, the casual viewers were already flipping the channel to TNT.
Raw Pops a Number While the Roster Implodes
That brings us to the podcast's discussion on Monday Night Raw drawing its best rating up to that point. Why did Raw suddenly pop a major television number in late April 1996? It definitely was not because people were dying to see Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw wrestle Bob Holly. It was the undeniable scent of blood in the water.
The Kliq was openly terrorizing the locker room and their attitude was bleeding directly onto the television screen. Diesel was acting like a guy who knew his Turner Broadcasting checks were already clearing. Razor Ramon was either suspended or checked out, depending on what day of the week it was. The product was shifting rapidly from goofy occupations like wrestling garbage men into something entirely more dangerous.
The podcast does a fantastic job translating the sheer panic radiating from the WWF front office through the pages of the newsletter. You did not need to be a corporate insider to know something was horribly wrong with the WWF's financial structure. The chaos was playing out on the USA Network every Monday night.
Eric Bischoff's Media Victory Lap
Then we get the Eric Bischoff interview segment. If you ever want to hear what pure, unfiltered hubris sounds like, listen to the hosts read quotes from 1996 Bischoff. He was doing media rounds and absolutely burying the WWF. He called their product completely tired. He mocked their arena sizes.
He was bragging about Nitro kicking their teeth in on a weekly basis. And the craziest part about all of his trash talk? He was entirely correct. Bischoff was a few weeks away from hitting the nWo button and changing the industry forever.
The newsletter captures him at his absolute peak swagger. He sounds exactly like a tech founder who just realized his startup is about to bankrupt a fifty-year-old legacy corporation. Hearing Moynahan and McDonald chuckle through Bischoff’s aggressive posturing is highly entertaining. It is especially funny knowing how spectacularly WCW would eventually implode just a few years down the road.
The Hitman's Masterclass in Negotiation Tactics
You also get the mandatory Bret Hart update. Bret had lost the title and promptly gone home to Calgary. The newsletter was dedicating massive column space to his mood swings and demands. Was he going to act in television shows? Was he negotiating with WCW for a monster contract? Was he just waiting for McMahon to grovel?
The dirt sheets were completely worked by Bret’s strategic silence. He was managing his public relations campaign brilliantly. By doing absolutely nothing, he became the most talked-about guy in the entire business. It is a stark contrast to how modern wrestlers operate today. If a top guy is off television for two weeks now, they are tweeting vague complaints and posting gym selfies just to stay relevant in the algorithm.
The podcast also touches on the newsletter’s coverage of the Marc Mero signing. This is a forgotten piece of incredible wrestling trivia. Vince McMahon panicked about WCW scooping up free agents and gave Mero the first guaranteed downside contract in WWF history. Mero was essentially a mid-card novelty act in Atlanta, and suddenly he was getting guaranteed money in New York.
The locker room absolutely lost their collective minds. Moynahan and McDonald detail how furiously the boys reacted to the new guy getting a financial safety net while they were out there working for fluctuating house show gates. Imagine being Bret Hart, carrying the company through its leanest years, and finding out Johnny B. Badd just walked in the door with a massive guarantee. The sheer pettiness of the 1996 locker room is entirely unmatched.
A Grueling Marathon of Trivial Details
However, I have to take this podcast to task for a minute. At 111 minutes long, this episode is a grueling test of endurance. Moynahan and McDonald are clearly passionate historians, but they desperately need an editor. We absolutely do not need a granular breakdown of how the newsletter covered a meaningless house show loop in the Northeast.
There is a solid twenty-minute stretch in the middle of this episode where they meticulously read through syndication carriage complaints and low-card injuries. It felt like watching a broadway draw between two guys who only know how to apply a chin-lock. I love wrestling history, but I do not care that Henry Godwinn tweaked his ankle in Scranton thirty years ago.
Retro podcasts often confuse archiving with entertaining. When you have pure gold topics like the Kliq exodus, the birth of the Monday Night Wars, and Bret Hart's exile, you do not need to pad the runtime with filler material. Trimming twenty minutes of mid-card injury reports would make this a vastly superior listen.
The Irony of the Unseen Future
If you can power through those dry spots, the dramatic irony makes it well worth your time. The absolute best part of dissecting a 1996 dirt sheet in 2026 is seeing exactly what everyone missed. The newsletter spends dozens of pages agonizing over Shawn, Bret, and Diesel. Meanwhile, a guy named Steve Austin is barely a footnote in the coverage.
Austin was just floating around the mid-card as The Ringmaster, slowly shedding the Million Dollar Champion gimmick. The King of the Ring tournament was still two months away. The Austin 3:16 promo had not happened yet. The biggest financial draw in the history of the business was sitting right under everyone’s noses.
The smartest newsletter in the world treated him like just another guy on the roster. It makes you look at the current television product today and wonder who is flying under the radar. What guy working the dark matches in 2026 is going to be headlining stadium shows in 2028?
The PWTorch Pastcast is a stark reminder that nobody actually knows anything in this business. We all act like certified experts on Reddit and Twitter. We all pretend we know exactly who the booker should push and who is going to be a massive crossover star. But this April 1996 time capsule proves that even the most plugged-in insiders were completely blind to the tidal wave that was about to hit them. Give the episode a listen, but keep your thumb hovering over the skip button when they start talking about the New Rockers.
