Post by Gillberg: 0-175 on Aug 13, 2007 19:50:14 GMT -5
Why doesn't he f***ing book TNA!?!?!?!??!?!
TNA signs Cornette, a great mind in the business. So what do they do? Bring back Russo and keep Cornette only on air.
nterview: Here's the third installment of an interview with Jim
Cornette from Wrestling Perspective (P.O. Box 401, Camillus, NY,
12031-0401, USA; possibly still $1.50 per monthly issue). The
interview was conducted on 07/20/93 and will give you an idea of
the quality of the newsletter.
WP: On the other side, given the wrestlers' lifestyle, whatever that
maybe, and hepatitis and AlDS, and whatever diseases con be
transmitted through blood, do you think it's ethical to encourage it?
JC: If somebody says to me and I'll say this - and I'm not going to
mention the guy's name -one guy, a part time guy, said to me, "In my
job, I work with a law enforcement agency and I carry prisoners around
and some of these guys are HIV positive and I can't do that." I said,
"Hey, that's cool." I've got no problem with that at all . But for the
most part, my God, I just don't see that it's that big a deal. Most of
these guys have known each other for years.
WP: That might be the problem.
JC: (laughs) You know what I mean. Me and Bobby Fulton, for example.
If Bobby Fulton was going to bleed on me, I'd be more worried about
one of the fans coming up to me and sticking me with a daggum ice
pick. Truthfully, nobody that's been here... well jeez, there are some
things that you need to do to get the match over and it's not that big
a worry. I'd be more worried about flying in an airplane. I'm
terrified of flying, but sometimes you've got to do it.
WP: If a wrestler came up to you and said, "Look, I've got a thing
about this. This really bothers me." Would you accept that? Would that
affect how you would promote that person?
JC: No. If I thought that they were still a talent that could draw
money in the territory, I'd keep them out of shit where they would
bleed. Most of the guys are also my friends as well as working for us.
So it's not like, "Hey, you do this or f*** off." That's worked to our
detriment at times because people tell me I'm too nice. No, that
wouldn't present a problem eitber. Like I say, if I was saying, "Okay,
tonight you're going to have to screw three hookers unprotected." But
if I said, "Tonight, you're going to have to get a little color." What
the f***, you could get hit with a truck too.
WP: The WWF likes to say they're family entertainment. Would you say
the same? If you had a kid, would you let them watch Smoky Mountain?
JC: Yeah, this whole thing has been so blown up about family
entertainment. The wrestling fans, and this used to be the case all
over Memphis when I was growing up, you had kids there, toddlers,
babies. One woman was having a daggum baby in Louisville and would not
go to the hospital until she saw who won the main event. They brought
the kids up bringing them to wrestling matches. They became wrestling
fans. It was not only a thing to do each week, but it was a meeting
place for all your friends, hangout at the matches and talk to
so-and-so . Those people, when they grew up and had kids, then they
brought their kids to the wrestling matches. You don't see animals
being mutilated, you don't see graphic sex. You see someone get hit in
the head with a chair and busted open. Well, Jesus Christ. They showed
that movie on TBS, Bad Boys with Sean Penn. He takes f***in' Coke
cans, which is where I got the idea with Ricky Morton at Christmas
time. He takes the Coke cans in the pillow case and bashes this guy's
brains out. There's blood everywhere and it's fake blood. I always
wanted to sit down with somebody at TBS programming and say, "You show
boxing, right?" "Yeah." "The boxers bleed, right?" "Yeah." "Okay,
that's real blood in a real sport, right?" "Yeah." "And you show it."
"Yeah." "You show movies." "Yeah." "The movies, the actors get beat up
and you've got fake blood." "Yeah." "So what's the f***in' deal with
wrestling? Some people think it's fake blood. That would be a movie.
Some people think it's real blood and that would be a boxing match and
they show both. What's the daggum deal? If somebody is going to watch
a wrestling program and a child is going to turn to crime or become a
pervert from something they saw on a wrestling show, then they don't
have any parents. They've obviously got a miserable homelife or some
type of chemical deficiency in the brain because that ain't going to
do it.
WP: It seems like it's overstated. They're editing Bugs Bunny cartoons
now.
JC: Yeah, everybody's too touchy. I watched the Road Runner and the
f***in' Wile E. Coyote (Genius) and I never thought about dropping
anybody off a cliff. There's weird people. A lot of people are f***ed
in the head and a lot of people are going to get ideas from anything.
Let's keep it to what common sense would tell me. If they were showing
like gang rapes on television and some teenagers would be susceptible.
"Yeah, let's go do that. That would be great." Well, okay, that's one
thing. But if you're showing a wrestler getting hit over the head with
a chair and bleeding and it's clear that the guy who did it is the bad
guy and it shouldn't be that way, then what's the harm. We could go on
forever witb examples. To me, everybody's too touchy. We have violence
because that's realistic and the basic premise of wrestling is that
good must triumph over evil. But think of how many movies you see
where they put the heat on that bad guy in the first hour and a half
and boy the last 30 minutes, it's time for the hero to kick some ass.
It's entertainment and the only thing different between wrestling and
that movie is for wrestling to draw money, you have to make the people
believe as much as possible that it's really taking place without any
cooperation of the participants because they really have to get mad at
that son of a gun and see him get his butt kicked. You have to have
credible, believable stuff. Let's put it this way. You have to be
consistent. WCW had Ric Flair and the Ding Dongs. The WWF has Doink
and Kimala and then they've got Sean Michaels and Bret Hart I don't
think we have any kind of shit like that, stuff that don't fit in. Our
good guys are good guys who are athletes and our bad guys are no-good
sons of a gun who try to f*** everybody around. They just do it in
different ways. But you don't see anything on our program that's way
out in left field and brings the level of credibility down. We don't
have a lot of gimmicks. But when we do have a gimmick, it will stand
out as a gimmick. Gimmicks have drawn a lot of money in wrestling, but
they drew it at a time when most territories were filled with
wrestlers and you had the gimmick and that made it all the more
different. But now, when everybody is the man and this man and the
other man instead of Bill, Bob and Joe, what's the use. Everybody's a
gimmick. The gimmick would be having a real guy . Different stuff used
in moderation draws money. When we really go all the way and have a
daggum gimmick in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, it's going to be an
outrageous son of a bitch. But at the same time, the commentators will
say, "Okay, we know this guy's really not from Mars. That's pretty
well accepted. The problem is he really thinks he's from Mars and
that's what makes him dangerous because he's a f***in' nut "
WP: Isn't that what you've got with Kevin Sullivan basically?
JC: With Kevin, he's still a real person. He's just a demented
psychopath. The Frankenstein Monster in Los Angeles. That's still a
well-remembered thing because they came out there and said, "Okay, Dr.
Frankenstein built this guy in his f***in' laboratory," and everybody
goes, "Yeah okay, I'm going to lift up my pillow and the Tooth Fairy
has left extra money tonight." If they had the Frankenstein Monster
out there, this is just my opinion, and the announcers had gone,
"Okay, we know this f***in' guy ain't put together from dead bodies.
But we don't know what the f*** the deal is with him to make him act
like this. His manager, this mad scientist, seems to believe this shit
and we don't know if he's trying to throw the other wrestlers off or
trying to scare people or psyche them out. But he' s one mean son of a
bitch."
WP: That's what they did with the Moondogs originally.
JC: Exactly. Yeah, these guys are just f***in' crazy. People love to
see freaks and nuts. They do. But you can't insult people's
intelligence by having the announcer, who is the host of your program,
if I had Bob Caudle come out and say, "Okay, here's the Invisible
Man." Automatically, everything he says is a lie.
WP: It (the invisible man ginmick) was done once.
JC: I know, but not in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. That's the whole
thing. Keep your credibility. On the surface of it, most wrestling
people are strange, unusual, bizarre or ridiculous. With Kevin
Sullivan, instead of us saying he worships the Devil, he practices
black magic.
WP: But that got over with him 10 years ago.
JC: But we can't do that over here or we'd have gotten kicked off TV.
This is the Bible Belt for Christ sake. We can't even run high schools
on Sunday. We didn't say that. What we said was, "This guy is
demented, he's evil, he likes to control people's minds. He tries to
get other people to do his dirty work." And that's believable. It's a
whole lot more believable. Look at serial killers. They're the
scariest things in the world because they're real. Are you more scared
of Dracula or John Wayne Gacy? When you're talking about a babyface,
to me, Jerry Lawler is one of the great baby faces because he's a real
person, he's not a cartoon-looking Superman, Greek god. So people can
identify with him. When he talked, he didn't do this wild, outrageous
interview. He said what was on his mind. Same thing with Tracey
Smothers. He's a real life guy. People know that this guy is from
Springfield, Tennessee. Boy, he's a big son of a gun, but he's not a
Greek god. He's an average guy. He says what he means. He talks to
people and he tries to tell the truth. He's a good athlete. When he
gets in that ring, he gives his best I don't want babyfaces where the
fans look at them like cartoon characters and super heroes. I want
babyfaces that people can relate to. When they're getting beat up, I
want the people to go, "Oh jeez, I hope he don't get hurt." That's a
babyface. With a heel, you don't want Dracula. You want the serial
killer. You want the guy that people really believe is a mean, nasty
son of a gun who's going to try to f*** their favorite around at every
given point. Like I said, when we finally do some real outrageous
gimmick, we will still make sure that people know, hey, we don't
believe this guy's from Mars. But we're afraid that he thinks he is
and this a dangerous son of a gun because he's a nut (laughs). The
voodoo guy, right. If the voodoo guy had come out and f***in' acted
like, in Global Rasta the Voodomon. If he had come out and done all
the shit and the announcers had said, "Well you know, voodoo is like a
religion in certain countries, Jamaica, West Indies, and evidently he
feels this quite strongly." That's great. But the voodoo guy comes out
and shakes his f***in' magic stick and the babyface doubles over,
you've got two for the price of one. You killed your heel and your
babyface.
WP: You should have told them somethng. You were standing right there.
JC: (laughs) I tried. I called Craig Johnson and Scott Hudson over and
said, "Look guys. I know it's out of my hands and I know it's out of
your hands. The people have to believe that the announcers are on the
level and no matter what you do, you're not going to overcome what
you've been told to say. If you came out and said 'Global Wrestling
Federation. We're a brand new wrestling federation. We want your
support. We're going to try to give you the best wrestlers and the
best athletes. It's going to be an alternative to the other
programming that you're seeing and in the months to come, we hope
you'll get behind us and we'll grow with your support."' I think it
would have got over. But I said, "What you guys are having to say that
we're the American office, the main office is in Barcelona, Spain. The
world tag team champions are the English Barons or whatever they were
and all this other stuff." I said, "People are automatically going to
say that everything they say is a lie because that's bullshit. That's
what you'll hear. Bullshit, click." People will say, "Bullshit,"
click, they turn to another channel. Bullshit click, bullshit, click.
Cornette from Wrestling Perspective (P.O. Box 401, Camillus, NY,
12031-0401, USA; possibly still $1.50 per monthly issue). The
interview was conducted on 07/20/93 and will give you an idea of
the quality of the newsletter.
WP: On the other side, given the wrestlers' lifestyle, whatever that
maybe, and hepatitis and AlDS, and whatever diseases con be
transmitted through blood, do you think it's ethical to encourage it?
JC: If somebody says to me and I'll say this - and I'm not going to
mention the guy's name -one guy, a part time guy, said to me, "In my
job, I work with a law enforcement agency and I carry prisoners around
and some of these guys are HIV positive and I can't do that." I said,
"Hey, that's cool." I've got no problem with that at all . But for the
most part, my God, I just don't see that it's that big a deal. Most of
these guys have known each other for years.
WP: That might be the problem.
JC: (laughs) You know what I mean. Me and Bobby Fulton, for example.
If Bobby Fulton was going to bleed on me, I'd be more worried about
one of the fans coming up to me and sticking me with a daggum ice
pick. Truthfully, nobody that's been here... well jeez, there are some
things that you need to do to get the match over and it's not that big
a worry. I'd be more worried about flying in an airplane. I'm
terrified of flying, but sometimes you've got to do it.
WP: If a wrestler came up to you and said, "Look, I've got a thing
about this. This really bothers me." Would you accept that? Would that
affect how you would promote that person?
JC: No. If I thought that they were still a talent that could draw
money in the territory, I'd keep them out of shit where they would
bleed. Most of the guys are also my friends as well as working for us.
So it's not like, "Hey, you do this or f*** off." That's worked to our
detriment at times because people tell me I'm too nice. No, that
wouldn't present a problem eitber. Like I say, if I was saying, "Okay,
tonight you're going to have to screw three hookers unprotected." But
if I said, "Tonight, you're going to have to get a little color." What
the f***, you could get hit with a truck too.
WP: The WWF likes to say they're family entertainment. Would you say
the same? If you had a kid, would you let them watch Smoky Mountain?
JC: Yeah, this whole thing has been so blown up about family
entertainment. The wrestling fans, and this used to be the case all
over Memphis when I was growing up, you had kids there, toddlers,
babies. One woman was having a daggum baby in Louisville and would not
go to the hospital until she saw who won the main event. They brought
the kids up bringing them to wrestling matches. They became wrestling
fans. It was not only a thing to do each week, but it was a meeting
place for all your friends, hangout at the matches and talk to
so-and-so . Those people, when they grew up and had kids, then they
brought their kids to the wrestling matches. You don't see animals
being mutilated, you don't see graphic sex. You see someone get hit in
the head with a chair and busted open. Well, Jesus Christ. They showed
that movie on TBS, Bad Boys with Sean Penn. He takes f***in' Coke
cans, which is where I got the idea with Ricky Morton at Christmas
time. He takes the Coke cans in the pillow case and bashes this guy's
brains out. There's blood everywhere and it's fake blood. I always
wanted to sit down with somebody at TBS programming and say, "You show
boxing, right?" "Yeah." "The boxers bleed, right?" "Yeah." "Okay,
that's real blood in a real sport, right?" "Yeah." "And you show it."
"Yeah." "You show movies." "Yeah." "The movies, the actors get beat up
and you've got fake blood." "Yeah." "So what's the f***in' deal with
wrestling? Some people think it's fake blood. That would be a movie.
Some people think it's real blood and that would be a boxing match and
they show both. What's the daggum deal? If somebody is going to watch
a wrestling program and a child is going to turn to crime or become a
pervert from something they saw on a wrestling show, then they don't
have any parents. They've obviously got a miserable homelife or some
type of chemical deficiency in the brain because that ain't going to
do it.
WP: It seems like it's overstated. They're editing Bugs Bunny cartoons
now.
JC: Yeah, everybody's too touchy. I watched the Road Runner and the
f***in' Wile E. Coyote (Genius) and I never thought about dropping
anybody off a cliff. There's weird people. A lot of people are f***ed
in the head and a lot of people are going to get ideas from anything.
Let's keep it to what common sense would tell me. If they were showing
like gang rapes on television and some teenagers would be susceptible.
"Yeah, let's go do that. That would be great." Well, okay, that's one
thing. But if you're showing a wrestler getting hit over the head with
a chair and bleeding and it's clear that the guy who did it is the bad
guy and it shouldn't be that way, then what's the harm. We could go on
forever witb examples. To me, everybody's too touchy. We have violence
because that's realistic and the basic premise of wrestling is that
good must triumph over evil. But think of how many movies you see
where they put the heat on that bad guy in the first hour and a half
and boy the last 30 minutes, it's time for the hero to kick some ass.
It's entertainment and the only thing different between wrestling and
that movie is for wrestling to draw money, you have to make the people
believe as much as possible that it's really taking place without any
cooperation of the participants because they really have to get mad at
that son of a gun and see him get his butt kicked. You have to have
credible, believable stuff. Let's put it this way. You have to be
consistent. WCW had Ric Flair and the Ding Dongs. The WWF has Doink
and Kimala and then they've got Sean Michaels and Bret Hart I don't
think we have any kind of shit like that, stuff that don't fit in. Our
good guys are good guys who are athletes and our bad guys are no-good
sons of a gun who try to f*** everybody around. They just do it in
different ways. But you don't see anything on our program that's way
out in left field and brings the level of credibility down. We don't
have a lot of gimmicks. But when we do have a gimmick, it will stand
out as a gimmick. Gimmicks have drawn a lot of money in wrestling, but
they drew it at a time when most territories were filled with
wrestlers and you had the gimmick and that made it all the more
different. But now, when everybody is the man and this man and the
other man instead of Bill, Bob and Joe, what's the use. Everybody's a
gimmick. The gimmick would be having a real guy . Different stuff used
in moderation draws money. When we really go all the way and have a
daggum gimmick in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, it's going to be an
outrageous son of a bitch. But at the same time, the commentators will
say, "Okay, we know this guy's really not from Mars. That's pretty
well accepted. The problem is he really thinks he's from Mars and
that's what makes him dangerous because he's a f***in' nut "
WP: Isn't that what you've got with Kevin Sullivan basically?
JC: With Kevin, he's still a real person. He's just a demented
psychopath. The Frankenstein Monster in Los Angeles. That's still a
well-remembered thing because they came out there and said, "Okay, Dr.
Frankenstein built this guy in his f***in' laboratory," and everybody
goes, "Yeah okay, I'm going to lift up my pillow and the Tooth Fairy
has left extra money tonight." If they had the Frankenstein Monster
out there, this is just my opinion, and the announcers had gone,
"Okay, we know this f***in' guy ain't put together from dead bodies.
But we don't know what the f*** the deal is with him to make him act
like this. His manager, this mad scientist, seems to believe this shit
and we don't know if he's trying to throw the other wrestlers off or
trying to scare people or psyche them out. But he' s one mean son of a
bitch."
WP: That's what they did with the Moondogs originally.
JC: Exactly. Yeah, these guys are just f***in' crazy. People love to
see freaks and nuts. They do. But you can't insult people's
intelligence by having the announcer, who is the host of your program,
if I had Bob Caudle come out and say, "Okay, here's the Invisible
Man." Automatically, everything he says is a lie.
WP: It (the invisible man ginmick) was done once.
JC: I know, but not in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. That's the whole
thing. Keep your credibility. On the surface of it, most wrestling
people are strange, unusual, bizarre or ridiculous. With Kevin
Sullivan, instead of us saying he worships the Devil, he practices
black magic.
WP: But that got over with him 10 years ago.
JC: But we can't do that over here or we'd have gotten kicked off TV.
This is the Bible Belt for Christ sake. We can't even run high schools
on Sunday. We didn't say that. What we said was, "This guy is
demented, he's evil, he likes to control people's minds. He tries to
get other people to do his dirty work." And that's believable. It's a
whole lot more believable. Look at serial killers. They're the
scariest things in the world because they're real. Are you more scared
of Dracula or John Wayne Gacy? When you're talking about a babyface,
to me, Jerry Lawler is one of the great baby faces because he's a real
person, he's not a cartoon-looking Superman, Greek god. So people can
identify with him. When he talked, he didn't do this wild, outrageous
interview. He said what was on his mind. Same thing with Tracey
Smothers. He's a real life guy. People know that this guy is from
Springfield, Tennessee. Boy, he's a big son of a gun, but he's not a
Greek god. He's an average guy. He says what he means. He talks to
people and he tries to tell the truth. He's a good athlete. When he
gets in that ring, he gives his best I don't want babyfaces where the
fans look at them like cartoon characters and super heroes. I want
babyfaces that people can relate to. When they're getting beat up, I
want the people to go, "Oh jeez, I hope he don't get hurt." That's a
babyface. With a heel, you don't want Dracula. You want the serial
killer. You want the guy that people really believe is a mean, nasty
son of a gun who's going to try to f*** their favorite around at every
given point. Like I said, when we finally do some real outrageous
gimmick, we will still make sure that people know, hey, we don't
believe this guy's from Mars. But we're afraid that he thinks he is
and this a dangerous son of a gun because he's a nut (laughs). The
voodoo guy, right. If the voodoo guy had come out and f***in' acted
like, in Global Rasta the Voodomon. If he had come out and done all
the shit and the announcers had said, "Well you know, voodoo is like a
religion in certain countries, Jamaica, West Indies, and evidently he
feels this quite strongly." That's great. But the voodoo guy comes out
and shakes his f***in' magic stick and the babyface doubles over,
you've got two for the price of one. You killed your heel and your
babyface.
WP: You should have told them somethng. You were standing right there.
JC: (laughs) I tried. I called Craig Johnson and Scott Hudson over and
said, "Look guys. I know it's out of my hands and I know it's out of
your hands. The people have to believe that the announcers are on the
level and no matter what you do, you're not going to overcome what
you've been told to say. If you came out and said 'Global Wrestling
Federation. We're a brand new wrestling federation. We want your
support. We're going to try to give you the best wrestlers and the
best athletes. It's going to be an alternative to the other
programming that you're seeing and in the months to come, we hope
you'll get behind us and we'll grow with your support."' I think it
would have got over. But I said, "What you guys are having to say that
we're the American office, the main office is in Barcelona, Spain. The
world tag team champions are the English Barons or whatever they were
and all this other stuff." I said, "People are automatically going to
say that everything they say is a lie because that's bullshit. That's
what you'll hear. Bullshit, click." People will say, "Bullshit,"
click, they turn to another channel. Bullshit click, bullshit, click.
TNA signs Cornette, a great mind in the business. So what do they do? Bring back Russo and keep Cornette only on air.
