This is Agent Provocateur with Alan Walsh and Adam Wild. Welcome to another episode of Agent Provocateur. I'm Alan Walsh with Adam Wild.

Adam Wild. Adam Wild. Adam Wild.

Haven't seen you in a couple of weeks. How are you?

I know. I missed you. How are you? I'm good. Things are good over here. Just anxiously awaiting the playoffs. We're about 10 games out as of this recording. How are you doing? What's going on?

Well, I've been to two Springsteen and East Street Band shows. Went to Vegas for the Friday night show. It was incredible and stayed in the same hotel as Bruce and the band, and got to visit and hang out with several members of the band, Friday and Saturday, and came back to LA and then drove to San Diego for Monday's show, which was another spectacular concert. So I'm actually a little bit under... Shocking, I know. A little bit under the weather today. No kidding. It's a little rough. Sinuses are a little rough, but I wanted to put down another episode and check in with the AP and put something out because I'm actually heading to Europe tomorrow. So here we are. You and I have talked about a couple of topics to discuss together.

Yes, we have.

Yeah. So let me begin by asking how you're doing, and then let's jump into it.

Well, I'm okay. I'm ready to go. I think I've got my five-year-old is doing good, so I'm good. I think that's really all I'm worried about these days. But Alan, I want to talk to you about something you actually tweeted earlier today, because every July first is Bobby Bonia Day. And even though it's free agency, you still find time to tweet, Happy Bobby Bonia Day. And if anybody doesn't know what Bobby Bonia Day is, it's a day where Bobby Bonia gets paid $1.193 million as a part of a buyout deal. This buyout deal started in 2011, and it goes till It's very famous in some sports circles, and one of potentially the best buyouts of all time. Something you tweeted today that I found really interesting, and this speaks to how weird baseball contracts are, is that Bobby Bunea has a second deferred contract with the Baltimore Orials for another $500,000 every year from 2004 until 2029. So Bobby Buneya, who hasn't played in the Major League since, well, it's got to be close to 20 years, is still making close to a million and a half dollars or just over every single year from two Major League ball clubs.

And you went out and talked to his agent with Pierre Marc Bouchard and Pascal Dupuy. And I just wanted to know what that dinner was like and what stories you would have heard from the agent about negotiating that deal.

So the Wild were in LA, and it was many years ago, and I was working with Bobby Bonia's agents. Bobby, huge hockey fan, wanted to come out for dinner with us. They had called him and said, Hey, we have a couple of NHL players and an agent that we're working with who we're all going out for dinner tonight. Would you like to come? Bobby Bonia came out with us. It was with Pierre Marc Bouchard and Pascal Dupouy. We sat and had a three-hour dinner the night before a wild Kings game here in LA. We actually talked about the deal and how it got negotiated. I heard about that from the agent side and from Bobby Bo side. Oh, wow. Let me begin by saying Bobby Bo is the absolute nicest guy in the history of the world. Just a He was a super nice guy. Originally, the amount deferred on that deal was $5.9 million. The ultimate payout from the $5.9 million deferral was $30 million.

How?

It was deferred at 8% compounded. If you've ever heard Warren Buffett talk about the power of compound interest, which are, as he says, his two favorite words in the English language, compound interest, it is incredible how fast money will grow at 8% compounded annually. Bobby Bo actually received a fairly sizable salary. The 5.9 million deferral was not an astronomical amount. There are many other baseball contracts after Bobby Bo that have contained deferral language, many with much higher amounts than 5.9 million. One of them recently done between probably the best player in Major League Base right now, Shoheya O'Neill, and the LA Dodgers, where very little of the contract, only $2 million a year is actually paid and the balance is deferred, that money is not just deferred. That money is deferred with an interest factor baked into to the deal. It serves two purposes. Number one, it allows the Dodgers to avoid hitting the threshold to pay a tax, and it allows Ohtani to receive the money at the end when his baseball career is already over and he is outside the state of California and will be able to to avoid paying California tax, which is the highest state income tax in the United States, on that contract.

So assuming he's moved back to Japan, as an example, he will be paying Japanese tax on that money. And when we had Sean Packard on as a guest about a month, month and a half ago, octagon's tax director, he explained a little bit about Yes.

Yeah. And it's interesting, Allan. I think that Bobby Bonilla, he must laugh to himself. I hope he's not working too hard because this is This is beautiful. I wonder why or I wonder about his agent, though. And is his agent one of the smartest people you've ever met? And why didn't more people do this?

So his agent who negotiated that deal It was a gentleman by the name of Dennis Gilbert. Back around 2000 to 2004, Dennis and I were very close. Dennis has a background in… Originally, he had a thriving, very successful insurance business where he sold life insurance. Along with selling life insurance, he sold annuities. And most of his clientele were celebrity clientele. I seem to remember Michael Jackson and Madonna being some of his clients at the time that he sold some massive life insurance policies, too. Dennis was originally a minor league baseball player. At a time when he had this a very successful, thriving life insurance business, he transitioned also to becoming a baseball agent and became one of the top agents in baseball back in around the mid '90s. In fact, this is a pretty funny story. I told this story, I didn't put a name on it, Back a couple of years ago on Agent Provocator, I was working as a prosecutor, as you well know, and there was an insert of the LA Times with a picture of Dennis. It was the LA Times Weekly magazine that was inserted into the Sunday LA Times.

It was a picture of Dennis calling him Baseball's Super Agent with a headline, his photo. He had money, cash, all spread out like a deck of cards that he was holding. It was a story on him and all of the record-breaking contracts that he had negotiated in the recent past. There was a whole bunch of them, from Jose Conseco to Mark McGuire to Ricky Henderson to Bobby Bonilla, and on and on and on and on and on. And I had called Dennis. Cold called him at his office, got him on the phone asking for advice on how to get started in the agent business? The key question I had for him was, no one in the business knows me. I don't know anybody in the business. I don't know players. I have a job at the DA's office. I'm prosecuting murder cases. How do you get started? All he kept telling me over and over again was, Kit, you got to have balls. I remember this. That was Dennis Gilbert. Wow. From that call, we ended up… Dennis was the lead partner and CEO of an agency called Beverly Hills Sports Council, and he had four other partners.

Back around 2001, 2002, I was associated for a couple of years with Beverly Hills Sports Council in a joint venture before moving on to octagon. I actually worked with... Dennis had already left, but I worked with agents who were Dennis' partner. Dennis was still very closely associated to the sports council. They had offices in the same building and were constantly around each other. Dennis and I, around 2001, became very good friends. And I can definitely consider him back in those days, one of my mentors.

Did you ever tell him the story, after when you became friends?

Oh, yeah. We chuckled about it all the time.

That's awesome. That's so great. I love that story. And you bring up Shoheya O'Tani. This is an interesting, potentially earth-shaking story. Now, if you've been living in Iraq and you've somehow missed Shoheya O'Tani story, I'm going to sum it up very quickly, very top line, but there's a lot more detail that I'm going to miss. Essentially, Shoheya O'Tani has been really good friends, best friends with his interpreter for about 10 years. And his interpreter was recently fired for gambling, spending four million or four and a half million dollars with an illegal bookie. Now, his initial interview with ESPN, which I believe was 90 minutes long, he said that Shohe had transferred him money to pay this gambling debt that he had accrued. The next day, he changed his story, and he said that he had actually stolen the money from Shohe O'Tani. Yesterday, we got a press conference from Shohe O'Tani. It was really the first time we'd heard from him, and He said that obviously he hadn't gambled on sports betting, or he gambled on games. He never gambled ever. He was really disappointed and really hurt by his friend's actions. And obviously, this has drawn an enormous amount of attention, not just because he's the number one player in the sport and probably the best player since Bayreuth, but also we're talking about the integrity of games.

We know what happened with Pete Rose when he was accused of, and I'm pretty sure it was proven, he's been banned from Major League Base, from going into the Hall of Fame. He was banned for life. Banned for life. Banned for life. Banned for life. And there have been every once in a while, there's a movement picks up Steen to bring him back. The MLB says, Absolutely not, no way. Now, Shohe Ohtani is playing. Alan, I think this conversation needs to be less about Shohe himself and more about players and money. I think when we dive into this, it's like a how likely is it. Let's say, Alan, I am a Major League athlete, and Jesse, who produces this show, wants to get $4 million dollars from me, and I have $100 million in the bank. How would he go about doing that?

I want to begin by saying I don't have any inside knowledge or facts regarding Shoheys' situation, but it is a potentially explosive and devastating story for MLB for this very reason. Over the last year, the The regional sports networks, Diamond Sports, has imploded, and there has been significant lost revenue in baseball. That revenue has been replenished, and some, by sports betting that MLB is actively involved in with their betting partners. So even More than I would say ever before, the integrity of the game, given that MLB is heavily involved now in the sports betting world, and that revenue is so critical in replacing the lost revenue from the RSNs, they need to ensure there has been no illegal activity and they need to ensure there has been no bidding on baseball. Having said that, and again, I have no information, I have no knowledge about that situation, particularly, so I can't comment on it at all. I can tell you that major league athletes that I represent, Octagon represents, and to my knowledge, other agents and agencies represent, most of them have money managers and set up through a business management situation. The business manager will, and Octagon does that in-house.

We had Frank Zecca on as a guest in our first season who talked about all of the processes that he goes through in working with the players. He has a superstar elite athlete clientele, from Olympics to NBA to Major League Base to NHL, including many of my clients. The business management group will set up all the bank accounts, credit cards, pay bills, and then a certain amount of money, usually it's on a monthly basis, will be wired out of the master account into an investment account and then be invested, whether it's in equities or bonds, a blend of the… That's the money managers who handle the decision on how that money gets allocated and diversified across all the different investments that are available. And for... Just say, for example, let's say, for example, I'm a bad guy, I'm a crook, and I want to steal from a client. I don't have control over the accounts, and I don't have control over the money. And if I sent Frank Zecca or somebody working under him an email email saying, Hey, could you please transfer $500,000 from this client's account to an account that I control or to another account?

I mean, right away, the stop signs have been triggered.Okay.Right? And nothing gets wired, nothing gets sent until the player confirms in writing that that is, in fact, his instructions. Sometimes a player is building a house and is sending a significant sum to a building contractor, and I may send instructions to wire a significant sum to this building contractor to build a house. The player is always copied the email, and nothing gets sent until the player confirms verbally and in writing that this is in fact his instructions and that he wants that money wired. Nothing happens without the player himself okaying any money leaving the account. Now, we've all heard, we all heard, horror stories stories over the years of players who've had money stolen from them.

Yes.

Usually, it happens where either the money management firm or the money manager is a crook. I have numerous stories and situations I could tell. There's one guy who is very prominent representing NHL players back in the '90s and 2000s, who is sitting in federal prison right now for stealing significant sums from NHL players, but he was a money manager. The money got sent to him to invest, and he was stealing it and was a total fraud. That can very well happen. It can very well happen. But assuming the money manager, and I don't see any allegations of the money managers being involved in criminal activity, an elite athlete with large sums of money, millions of dollars, I would assume is with a fairly reputable, large money businessman management firm, whether it's Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or Octagon Financial and some of the other very substantial business management firms that are dealing with and have assets placed with them in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Okay? The ability to wire money out by a friend or even the agent I can't see it happening. I've been doing this for 30 years now, and like I said, and and players are well aware of all the processes set up and verifications that are needed to do anything, I don't have the ability to access anybody's accounts, even if I wanted to, and I was a bad guy.

It's not even possible.

It's not possible. It's not possible. So in that respect, I, along with many other people, have questions. I have no information, but I certainly have a lot of questions about what actually occurred.

Yeah, no kidding. I think even the story-changing raises some red flags. Let me ask you something. What do you know about morality clauses? Because one of the things that's been speculated on is the fact that even if Shoheya O'Tani didn't gamble, if he paid off his translator/best friend's gambling debt to an illegal bookie, that could put him in bad stead to have his contract canceled. And that has to do with morality clauses. Can you explain that? I mean, everybody's got one in an employment contract, but in Major League Base or NHL terms, what can that mean for a player?

It would be very difficult to terminate a contract, but it wouldn't be... I mean, a player could be subject to a one-year suspension or even a longer suspension based on violating the code of conduct that exists that the league has implemented in any of the major sports for different reasons. A player would always have the right to file a grievance against the club for a termination of a player contract. It has been a line in the sand in the NHL with regard to the NHLPA that has never been crossed, even with Mike Richards back with the LA Kings. The Kings tried to at the time, but were unable to terminate that contract. And recently, there have been a couple of contract terminations that have been negotiated, basically, between the player, the the league and the PA on the hockey side. In the baseball side, it's much rarer to see any player contract terminated for any reason, and it would be a very difficult thing where you'd have to prove a pretty heinous activity or illegal, very clearly illegal conduct to go down that road.

Okay. It's very interesting. It's a story that we got to keep watching, I think. Now, Allen, I think the hockey community was shocked and mourned Chris Simon's passing. Chris Simon, 52 years old, played for many years in the NHL, played for the Caps, played for the Rangers, the Flames, that Calgary, that magical run to the Stanley Cup final, the New York Islanders, and ended his career with a few games with the Minnesota Wild. Obviously, far too young, and there's been things out there about the nature of his passing. Obviously, what comes to the four is the fact that he fought 101 times just at the NHL level, the fact that there were documented issues that look like symptoms of CTE. And obviously, you can't test for CTE until somebody's passed. And then, of course, the NHL's refusal, again, as you would expect at this point, to acknowledge any link between hockey and traumatic brain injuries. I wanted to get your thoughts on this one because in a weird way, it seems like it's like second verse, same as the first. We're seeing the same thing over and over and over again. Is that how you feel about it?

I feel really devastated, not just by what happened with Chris Simon. There was also a former NHL player who committed suicide the same week, Konstantin Koltsov. Yes. But also the news yesterday that Bob Murdoch, two Two-time Stanley Cup winner, Montreal Canadian, LA King, passed in his 70s and had his brain, after passing, analyzed for CTE by the Boston University CTE Center, affiliated with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, of which I'm a board member. You know, full disclosure. I am just personally really devastated by the news and equally outraged by the response of Gary Bettman and Bill Daley at the NHLGM meetings last week. Bill Daley basically said, with regard to CTE, Well, the science still isn't there. Lacking.

I think he said lacking.

Lacking. And it's bullshit. It's bullshit. Gary said, Well, with regard to Chris Simon, you said a lot of very nice things about the man, and then said, We're going to wait for the medical experts and what they have to say about this, staying away from the issue. Now, there have been what people need to know is that since 2002, Gary Bettman has been saying basically the same thing for about 20 plus years now. The science of CTE is not at the point where you can establish a... He always uses this word, a definitive or a conclusive link between repetitive head trauma and the onset or existence of CTE. That may have been true in 2002. But in the interim, there have been numerous studies which the NHL has not participated in or funded at all in any way. Just imagine the hypocrisy of saying, We need more studies. There are 750 players in the NHL. There are 4,000 living retired players in the NHL. We need more studies. But what he's not saying, but what he actually... They're not willing to invest at all or fund any studies to help reach the conclusions that he doesn't want reached.

To me, that's the ultimate level of hypocrisy. There was a definitive study published in 2022 that found definitively that there is a causal link between repetitive head impacts and CTE. There is still a lot we don't know. But let's look at this for a second. The Canadian government, the United States National Institute of Health, the CDC, the US military, the NFL, have all acknowledged there is a causal connection between repetitive impacts and CTE. And the NHL is the only league still with still holding out saying, We just don't know enough about it. There was a radio interview that Gary gave that got very contentious several years ago where he said, There may be a connection, there may not be a connection. We don't know. There needs to be more research. There needs to be more research. What we don't know is why certain players get CTE from repetitive impacts and why some players do not. But the incidence of players who have donated their brains to a brain bank for examination after passing, there has been a significant number of players where CTE has been found in their brains. Bob Murdoch was not an enforcer.

Bob Murdoch was not an overly physical player. Stan Makeda was not an enforcer. Aubrey Richard was not an enforcer. And Bob Murdoch, Stage 3 CTE, very significant, very prominent finding, was released yesterday. Many of the legends, from Reggie Fleming to Henri Richard, to Stan Makeda, to Rick Martin, Steve Monador, and many others have been found, their brains have been found to have CTE. I think at this point, it's a given. It's an accepted fact that there is a causal link. Why am I so adamant that Gary Bettman needs to admit what we all know to be true? Why? Because only when we get past an admission that there is a link, can we all go to the next level of figuring figuring out how to make the game safer and how to reduce this going forward? We had Ken Driden on. It was the only topic we discussed with him. He was very eloquent. He wrote a book called Game Change, about Steve Monteror's life and death, and and subsequent CTE findings, where he said, I wrote the book for an audience of one, Gary Bettman. It was the reason why he wrote the the book, and he met Gary, and he presented the book to him, and Gary basically never followed up with him.

Ken Driden, Hockey Hall of Famer. The evidence is there. The science is there. It's not lacking. It's not lacking. They know it. They know it. It's not good enough to say, Well, if we admit it, we're going to subject the league to liability. That's not what it's about.

No.

It's about there is now generations of retired players suffering, and we stand on their shoulders. We stand on... They are the ones who built this game, and we owe it to them now to see to it that from here on out into the future, not only are these players properly cared for and given the resources they need, Okay? Based on the sacrifices they made, but for all the players playing today, for all the players playing minor hockey, youth hockey, high school, college hockey, we always it to them as well. We owe it to them. That's where my passion comes from.

No question. And Alan, I think we're past the point of expecting Gary Bettman to come out with this on his own. I don't expect him to ever come out and say, Yeah, you know what? We haven't admitted it, but now we're going to. So my question to you would be, If that's the case, then you have to find something that may compel him to do that. And do you think that there's anything out there that could compel the NHL eventually? What would the conditions have to be to compel them to go, Okay, we can't deny this anymore?

Well, I think the players, the mainstream media, the hockey media, agents, and fans all joining together and demanding that Gary either admit the causal link, which we all know to be true, Or let's get rid of them.

Yeah.

Let's get rid of them. I don't believe anybody should be sitting with the title of NHL Commissioner who can stand up today and say, The science is lacking, or, Let's hold on here and wait for the medical experts. We just don't know enough about this to make any assumptions. He's made lots of other statements of denying CTE in the past that he still stands by. Let's get rid of him. Get rid of him.

Easier said than done.

Well, people say, Oh, Allen, you've got it in for Gary. I think he's done a very good job for his constituency of owners. He's not the Commissioner of the League. He's not the Commissioner of the NHL. He's He's not the Commissioner of the players. He's the Owner's Commissioner. He serves at the pleasure of the owners. He reports to the owners. He answers to the owners. There is a process to remove him. I think that anyone today in 2024 taking the position that CTE is not a thing and does not put players at risk and should should be just ignored does not deserve to sit in that chair any longer. Period. End of story.

Fair enough. Okay. Well, it seems like It seems like a tough task, but at the end of the day, the one thing I will say is father time is undefeated. Gary has been there a long, long time, and I know he signed an extension a couple of years ago, but You do have to ask, I do have to ask, how much longer? You just don't know. You just don't know.

I got an email last night from the father of a former NHL player who passed away at a relatively early age, and his brain was found to have CTE. The father e-mailed me a link to the Bob Murdoch story, and the e-mail said to me, How many more, Alan? How many more? And quite honestly, that question has haunted me and still haunts me on a daily basis. How many more, Gary? How many more?

Alan, switching gears off of that topic because it's a tough one to take a turn from, but I wanted to ask you about this, too. So recently, the Philadelphia Flyers have had some gold signing issues. And one of them was a surprise signing the other day. Today, we find out that they get another goalie out of Russia, one that they've been chasing for a long, long time. And of course, one that the Russian government had been hesitant to let go. My question to you is, not necessarily with Ivan Fedotov, specifically, because that's still believed that he's coming. We still don't know, but we know CKSA Moscow terminated his contract. When there are countries where great hockey players play and they're developed and they have of bad relations with North America, where all the teams are located. This is not the first time this has happened. This was happening during the Soviet Union, and I think the breakup of Czechoslovakia, and so many other things that happened. What's it like to do business in a country with players for teams and for agents where they may be a state that is not necessarily a pariah state, but one that is not in good international standing with, say, the American or the Canadian government?

What's it like to get a player out of a country like that?

I've been to Russia probably about 50 times since I've been in the business. That's 5, 0, 50 times all over. I can share one story with you. There was a player who was drafted, and we wanted to bring the drafted player over to play in the CHL. The player had a contract with his Russian club. I had flown over to Moscow and was staying at a hotel that's frequented by NHL Scouts. Every morning, everybody's having breakfast around the same time, you go get some eggs from the buffet and some toast, sit down and talk about the day. One scout said he was going to watch a game at SESCA. Another scout was going to watch a game in Podolsk, which is just outside of Moscow. Another scout was going here, there. Hey, Allen, what are you doing? I said, I got a meeting at 11:00 with this gentleman. He's President of the club. All the scouts looked at each other. One of them dropped his fork and knife and looked at me and said, Do not go to that meeting. I'm like, Why not? He said, Do not go to that meeting. The scouts are...

And these are Russian scouts, a few of them there at the table. Well, this individual, apparently, there was a meeting he had six months ago with somebody who said the wrong thing that he didn't like, and he pulled out a gun and shot the guy dead in his office and has never been seen since. Like, do not go to the meeting. I'm like, Well, I got to go to the meeting. But I'm also now rightfully He was terrified. Yeah. At going to the meeting. I go to the rink and I have a translator with me and we go to the office and knock on the door. He was expecting us, and he was writing something down, and without even looking up, he motioned for us to come in, came in and sat down. It was almost like a scene from the Godfather. I said, Sir, I greatly respect you allowing me to come here and meet with you. Thank you very much for your valuable time. We represent this player who is drafted by this club. He would like to come play in the Canadian in Hockey League. Anything that happens will be only done with your permission and only your permission.

Nobody will go anywhere without you, specifically, I'm perfectly agreeing to it with all respects afforded to you. And there is a contract. We respect the contract. I'm a lawyer, and he looks up and he's listening to me now. When I was done, he said, Never has anybody come in here to my office and spoken to me like this. Usually, you Americans come in with your dirty boots on and put your feet up on my coffee table. He was making an analogy as if somebody had come into your house boots with dirty boots, didn't take them off at the door, and then with those dirty boots, put them on your coffee table while you leaned back and raised your feet. He said, I will speak to my general manager and my coach, and you can call me tomorrow at this time, and I will give you my answer. And then I got the hell out of It was a very polite, very nice meeting, and I called the next day, and I had my translator next to me, and he ended up allowing the player to go play junior.Wow.Yeah. That was one story, one experience. Another one was, I was one time watching a game at Krilya Sovietow, which is Soviet Wings.

In the middle of the second period, army commandos with rifles out started running up the stairs of all of the seats in the stands and started telling everybody to leave. I have my translator sitting next to me and he says, We have to leave. They emptied out the entire arena and all the players who were in full equipment with their skate blades now on cement outside. They padblock the arena. Apparently, there was an ownership change that occurred during the game. The new owner was evicting the old owner, and everybody got thrown out into the streets until everything got settled. It's a very unstable place to be doing business. Wow. Yeah.

Holy. I can't imagine how uncomfortable that would be. Unstable is one way to put it.

They wouldn't let the players back into the rink to get their clothes or their wallets or their phones. Wow. That building was shut down tight with military people standing in front of the doors with rifles.

That is crazy. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Wow. Okay, so it's not easy then is what we're saying.

Not easy. No, it's not.

Yeah. Then There's an understandable hesitancy knowing that general managers are like, Well, is there somebody else other than the Russian guy right now? And you know what? The thing is, is that people are always going to defer to talent and figure the rest out later. It seems like the flyers have. Allan, before I let you go, I just want to ask you this. We're about 10 games out from the playoffs. What's the thing right now as an agent that you are most excited about?

Well, as somebody who has been working with players all through the year, this is when the games get particularly meaningful. And have great bearing on the standings. A Detroit-Washten game is like a playoff game. We just had one a couple of days ago. The intensity of the games have picked up at all levels, not just the NHL, but American League, Junior League, there's playoffs starting. College hockey, there's playoffs going on right now. In Europe, the highest league are in their playoffs. So that's always a fun time of year. I think now we're close enough to the draft where in just a few months, we've got the draft happening, and this year, it's in Vegas at the Sphere. I think that's going to be a great event, and it's something that I'm really excited about and looking forward to. We're going to have the World Championships played in Czech Republic this year, the men's World Championships. That is something that's going to be a great tournament with some awesome players in there. We've got in April the Under-18 World Championships coming up that are going to be played. All in all, this is a great time of year for some intense hockey at all levels.

It's probably between the months of April 1 and the the end of June, one of the most exciting periods of the season. Then boom, right after the draft, you've got unrestricted free agency, arbitration filing dates. It's fast in your seat belt time.

Could there be some noted Alan Walsh clients at the World Championships?

There could very well be.

Okay. All right. Alan, thank you so much. I hope that you enjoy your trip, and I hope that you feel better because I know it's... Listen, too much Bruce Springsteen sometimes catches up with you.

The patient will live. The patient will live. Looking forward to getting Looking forward to getting over to the other side of the pond and spending some time with both my kids.

Awesome. We'll see you when you get back.

You got it. This has been Agent Provocateur with Alan Walsh and Adam Wild. Follow Alan Walsh on Twitter @Walsh. A. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast by searching Agent Provocateur and hitting the subscribe button, youtube. Com/sdpn.