‘Wrestling Is Everywhere’ ESPN’s Marc Raimondi Examines The Cultural Impact Of The NWO In His New Book ‘Say Hello To The Bad Guys’ (Interview)

The nWo had a profound effect on not only in the professional wrestling world, but also pop culture.

ESPN’s Marc Raimondi’s new book “Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling’s New World Order Changed America’ documents the rise of the legendary nWo wrestling group, and the impact they had on the World.

We sat down with Raimondi to talk about the book, which is currently available on Amazon and book stores everywhere.

Let’s start with the title of the book “Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling’s New World Order Changed America”, which seems like a pretty bold claim, can you explain?

“I’ve always told people that wrestling is everywhere. If you know a little bit about it, you can see it in a lot of different places in this world, from media to sports to music to politics. It really touches all the things that we consume. If you’re not a wrestling fan, you may not realize that, which is why I think this is an important book to pick up for non-fans. But the hypothesis is that the ’90s were the biggest time, at least in our lifetimes, as far as it was a red-hot, incredible boom period. More than 10 million people watching between Raw and Nitro on Monday nights every single week, cut into the audience of Monday Night Football, which sounds absurd now in 2025 that anything could ever touch Monday Night Football.”

“During the nWo era, and that era of wrestling with everyone watching, mostly young men who are pre-teen, teen, young adult, 20s, 30s, whatever. All of those folks have now grown up, and we’re doing whatever we’re doing in the world as far as our jobs, social media, and whatever. We’re lawyers, doctors, writers, musicians, artists, actors, et cetera. We all grew up with this stuff, and it influenced us immensely, even if we don’t fully realize it. But it’s part of us because it was a big part of our childhood.

Now, as we lead our lives in America, we’re taking that influence that’s embedded in us from wrestling back in the ’90s, and we brought it to the forefront of our lives, even sometimes subconsciously. And that’s the hypothesis for the book. It’s like the nWo started that big boom period, and because it influenced us so much, now it’s become just a part of our culture. It’s embedded with the culture. The way How do you affect a culture? How do you affect a society?”

“You affect and influence the people in the society, in the culture. And that’s what pro wrestling did in the ’90s, and now here we are today.”

How much research did you do for the book?

“So I went back and I watched over 500 hours of WCW programming from 1996 to ’99. And that was a very long process, but I felt it was really important, especially because the people that I interviewed for the book, this was a long time ago. This was almost 30 years ago. Memories fade, and people don’t remember things that happened in great detail from 30 years ago. I felt it was important to go back and watch all those hours of programming.

“So when I was doing the interviews with these people, I had a working knowledge of what was going on in WCW at that time. And I took a lot of notes, so I knew the dates, places, and what happened. And that was really helpful to me because if I had done the interviews without that, I felt like I would not have been able to ask all the questions that I wanted to. I felt it was very important. And then I conducted over 100 interviews for the book as well. All people that were involved in WCW, from the wrestlers to producers, directors, production assistants, anyone that I could find, engineers, people who worked in the control room, the truck, I mean, pretty much everyone that I could track down.”

Is it true that you found the woman who created the nWo logo while doing your research?

“No one knew who she was. So, until I found her a few years ago in reporting on this book, she had never talked. She had never done an interview because she never… She barely even realized that the nWo logo got that big. She didn’t know. I mean, she had an idea that it was big, but she didn’t know how big. And I had to explain it to her. And the first thing she asked me was, ‘So, how many T-shirts did they sell with that logo?’ I was like, you don’t want to know because I know you didn’t get paid any revenue from that, but they’ve sold millions and millions of dollars, and they continue to sell a lot of T-shirts of the nWo logo.

“It’s really become one of the most iconic logos, maybe in American pop culture history. It’s been duplicated and replicated so many times as different logos or different brands or whatever with the same style. And she was the one who did it in ’96. It was just so crazy to me that no one knew who she was. But she was just a 27-year-old woman at that time.”

“I was almost a kid, basically. And she was really cool. And she said one of the cool things is that her son never knew her as a logo designer or any artist or creative. Her son only knows her as a real estate agent. That’s what she does now. She’s in real estate. So this was also a way for her to connect with her son in some ways, because when she found out that I was doing the book and she had to tell her son, Hey, I did a logo that Kendall Jenner wore and Aziz Ansari wore and Kevin Durant wore. And she said that her son thought that was really cool. It gave her street cred because he didn’t know what the logo was, but he recognized it because it’s obviously still recognizable. But yeah, she was a pleasure to talk to, and I’m glad that I found her, and I’m glad that she’s finally getting the credit that she deserves after all these years.”

The nWo has been written about extensively; there are several podcasts on the subject. What differentiates this book from everything out there on the nWo, and who is the target audience?

“I know there’s a lot of stuff. And that was one of the big goals was… I’m a fan, and I’ve read all this stuff, and I’ve consumed all that content, all those documentaries. And it was one of my goals to not only just serve the hardcore fans who know a lot of the story already, but also do my best to serve the lapsed fans, the people who maybe were big fans of wrestling in the ’90s and now no longer are and haven’t kept up with it. And that’s a big audience, right? Because we were just saying before, 10 million people were watching on Monday nights in ’98 and ’99. And most of those people are no no longer watching wrestling, but they’re still out there, right? They’re still out there. I really wanted to target them with the book and also non-fans to help them understand the impact of wrestling.

“But for the hardcore fans, it’s hard because like you said, there have been a lot of things written about this. But the thing that differentiates this book is the tie-in to pop culture of what was going on in the ’90s and how the nWo and wrestling really influence society and pop culture.”