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Tape Reviews
Jim Cornette Shoot Interview
Posted by Brandon Truitt on Aug 4, 2003, 19:00
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the anniversary party for my first year on the site. There will be booze... and hookers... and blackjack! No, wait, that was just my trip to Vegas. Anyway, I'll be treating myself this week as much as I'm treating y'all because this IS the best shoot interview of all time.
Before we start, I'd like to give thanks to everyone who's helped me out in this first year.
First, thanks to Damian "The Dames" Gonzalez, Mike the Admin, and my tape pimp himself, Will "Goodhelmet" Helmick, for giving me this opportunity after seeing my work at the old Smarks forum and World Domination Inc.
Second, I'd like to thank Dr. Tom, JHawk, Crucifixio Jones, Jay Spree, Retro Rob, and all the other writers on this site for pimping my stuff while they were putting out their own high quality stuff.
Third, I'd like to thank all the people and sites which have supported TSM and myself in several ways. These include, but are not limited to, Jay "El Cubano" Bower, Tom Zenk, The Scotsman, World Domination Inc., Justin Baisden, Dave Meltzer, Highspots, and Kayfabe Memories.
I almost forgot... let's all welcome Charles "Loss4Words" Williams as he makes his first regular appearance as our new RAW recapper this week, as he made his debut in the middle of last week after sending in a test column to The Dames. While I'm sad to see Patrick Spoon take a sabbatical from writing, it's great that Loss was able to get this opportunity because he's a great guy, hilarious, and has a knowledge of wrestling that towers over my own.
Ok, now that I've reached my ass-kissing quotient for the week, I'll tell you that next week's shoot will be the second Raven shoot, where he covers his career from leaving ECW to the present. While his WCW isn't covered to the degree I wish it was, he has a lot to say about his second ECW and WWE runs in addition to some of his personal problems and the circumstances surrounding him quitting WCW.
As always, you can feel free to Drop me an e-mail, read the archives, buy me stuff, or buy yourself stuff at Highspots.com.
Jim Cornette Shoot Interview (11-6-2000)
The tape starts out with footage of Cornette�s Midnight Express, in the Bobby Eaton / Dennis Condrey version, beating up on some jobbers at a NWA TV taping. After laying the smack down, Cornette calls out The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, to the ring and says �Hello, Mr. Dream. You certainly have a nice hat� did you get a free bowl of soup with it?� etc. Dustry then lays out Cornette and both Midnights until Condrey hits Dusty with the ever-present tennis racket, Baby Doll jumps Bobby Eaton, and then the heels proceed to beat down on both Baby Doll and Dusty until the entire face locker room empties. He footage then cuts to Cornette throwing a fireball in Ronnie Garvin�s face, Cornette�s infamous fall from the scaffold at Starrcade 1986, and, finally, a promo about the Rock and Roll Express where Cornette calls Ricky Morton�s father �a drunk alcoholic� while Stan Lane makes the �drinky-drinky� motion in the background until Ricky slaps Cornette across the face.
What is his current capacity in Ohio Valley Wrestling? He supervises the developmental program for Ohio Valley Wrestling, which is one of the WWF�s several developmental territories. (This has drastically changed since the interview. Memphis, Puerto Rico, and Heartland Wrestling Association have all been dropped as developmental territories leaving OVW as the sole survivor.) Cornette came up with the idea for this program several years ago then, upon a chance encounter with Danny Davis, visited OVW and decided to make it a developmental territory as an excuse to move home and escape Connecticut, where the WWF is based. Davis and Ken Wayne had been the first tag team that Cornette ever managed and he had known Davis for years as a result.
Was he a fan as a child? Yes, he started watching wrestling around the age of ten. He watched the Memphis territory, which ran in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. He went to the matches for years, started taking pictures of the matches for himself and, eventually, became good enough at it that the wrestlers would buy copies of the pictures from him. It snowballed from there. He calls himself and Bobby Eaton the �two classic hangers-on of wrestling� because they would do everything from sell programs to being the ring announcer. He always wanted to be a wrestler, as do most people around the business, but he knew that he didn�t have a shot in Hell of pulling it off. He always kept the idea of managing in the back of his mind but never figured he�d get paid for it. He used to cut promos for the fun of it in the car and for some of the guys, which lead to his first big opportunity in the business when Jerry Jarrett heard about Cornette�s promos and decided to use him as a manager. He was so delighted by the news that he didn�t even remember the 400 mile drive home.
His early TV appearances- Before his first appearance, he told a friend of his to watch the Memphis TV that week because something special would happen. As he put it, �I wasn�t even smart yet and I was kayfabing.� As it happens, Louisville is on the bicycle (the tape is sent from TV station to TV station, so it�s shown on delay and, since the Louisville timeslot was 30 minutes shorter than the Memphis timeslot, some material was cut) and Cornette�s bit didn�t make the cut in Louisville. His friend asked him what was supposed to be so special, so he told him �watch next week� and then his friend was pissed that he wasn�t told about it.
His first on-camera promo- It was brutally bad and he wishes he could destroy all copies of it. He didn�t even face the camera for it. He asks the interviewer �Do you have it? And you aren�t going to get it?�, although it ends up on the tape after all. His gimmick was based on Gary Hart�s original gimmick of a rich mama�s boy. When he was pitched the gimmick, he was told �they used to try to shoot Gary Hart, they used to try to stab Gary Hart, he had SO much heat��, which got him thinking �Oh, this sounds attractive�� The first promo was done on the notion that he wanted to be a manager but not like Jimmy Hart, who managed �common and uncouth� wrestlers but, rather, someone who�d manager the popular wrestlers like Jerry Lawler or Bill Dundee. Interviewer Lance Russell was good enough at his job to ask Cornette questions to get the proper responses, such as leading him with questions about money and supporting himself until Cornette started selling the �spoiled rich mama�s boy� gimmick. It was able to get the fans thinking �Who is this dumb shit and why is he on my TV�, which gave him immediate heat. Dundee himself told Cornette that he was such a natural at it that �If we smarten you up, you�ll destroy your gimmick and lose your heat.�
Jerry Lawler- He always loved his work and thought he was amazing at promos and psychology. He learned early in his career that he needed to know what to do when and why, so that you can control what people are thinking. Eddie Graham did the same thing. He says that it doesn�t matter if you can do moonsaults because, if you know psychology well enough to get 20,000 people thinking the same thing, you can draw money. (That�s about 75% true in my opinion. Psychology is a tremendously big asset for success but you still need more than basic moves to get over these days, which is a product of the wrestling wars and the influence of guys who�ve worked extensively in Japan and Mexico. This doesn�t necessarily mean highspots, as one of Tajiri�s kicks is capable of generating a lot of interest. Cool moves = money. Psychology = more money. Psychology + some cool moves = BIG money.)
Bill Dundee- Bill Dundee was a bigger influence on his career than Lawler, as Dundee was a master of finishes for matches. Every night, Cornette would write down what his match was, what the finish was, what the house was, and what his payoff was. This worked out for him well in Mid-South, when it helped him keep track of which towns had just seen certain weeks of the territory�s TV show and the Midnights would change their match that night accordingly. Dundee later commented that Cornette probably made more money from Dundee�s finishes than Dundee did himself, since Cornette used them in areas where Dundee hadn�t been yet. When the Midnights went to World Class after their run in Mid-South, they found out that there were few complicated finishes given out because the Von Erichs had trouble remembering them. As a result, there was a near riot when they won their first match in the territory by having Dennis Condrey kick Bobby Eaton when one of the Fantastics tried to pick him up. That drilled into his mind the importance of what the fans are conditioned to go nuts for. �If they pop on the first moonsault, you don�t need to give them three.� They just toned things down a bit and still had great matches.
Memphis- For the first six months in the business, he traveled by himself since he was the only Memphis guy to live in Louisville. After he got tired of all the extra driving he had to do by living so far away from the other towns, he moved to Nashville and rode with �The Angel� Frank Morell, Bobby Eaton, and the duo of Exotic Adrian Street and Miss Linda. (Rico and Jackie Gayda�s current gimmick is based on the Street and Linda pairing, except Street was allowed to beat the living crap out of his opponents instead of just offering them a room key.) He says that Adrian and Linda were great because Adrian had the whole British Cockney thing going and that Linda seemed demure except that Linda was the true boss of the duo and neither seemed to realize it. He learned by riding with the other guys and even started learning before he got into the business. He explains that he started taking pictures before he had a driver�s license so the infamous Mama Cornette would drive him from town to town and sell his pictures. Guys like Bobby Fulton used to ride along with them sometimes. He talks about how Bobby would tell stories of being in other territories such as Stampede and do a great Stu Hart impression, which Corny tries to imitate. (Stu Hart and Jim Barnett are probably the two promoters who everyone does impressions of with Dusty Rhodes being the most imitated modern wrestler by far.) He says that the business today doesn�t have enough of guys riding back from a town after the matches, which is where Cornette said the bulk of the learning was done because they�d critique each others� matches.
Early guys he managed- He was portrayed as a total screwup so he didn�t manage people for long at first. His first wrestler was Sensational Sherri Martel, as he jokingly says �My mommy bought me a girl.� The second wrestler was Dutch Mantel, which saw Cornette at ringside for the main event match of Mantel vs. Lawler, which was his first time ever at ringside as a manager since he only did promos with Sherri. He ended up costing Mantel the match and was fired as his manager, so he then started managing Crusher Broomfeld (One Man Gang) to get back at him. �I set his career back five years and he�d only been in the business three at the time.� After that, he managed Jesse Barr (Jimmy Jack Funk) then Street and Linda, which got him into his first money-drawing angle.
Working with Adrian Street and Miss Linda- Together with Street and Linda, they worked a long program against Bill Dundee through all the towns. Cornette relates the story of a lumberjack strap match he was involved in where Dundee tried to throw him out of the ring but, because he accidentally threw Cornette into the middle rope, Cornette took a bad bump onto the apron face first. If it was any territory other than Memphis, the edge would have been padded. However, it wasn�t and Cornette ended up with a cut on his cheek that bled profusely and left a scar when it healed. �When I landed on the floor, the first thing I though was �I�m conscious!�, then I started seeing this red shit right about here .� It was already a bad night to begin with since the Fabulous Ones (Stan Lane and Steve Kiern), Jerry Lawler, and Terry Taylor were the lumberjacks at ringside and at least one fan had given Kiern an extra belt to whip the heels with. When Taylor came around to try and whip Cornette back into the ring, he reared back to hit him then turned away and left because of all the blood coming from the cut. He had to continue the match for another ten minutes, lose to Dundee, let Adrian �dance around me like a Maypole�, then go to the back and wait three matches for his ride, Jimmy Hart, to get a yellow streak painted along his back before he could go to the hospital.
Jimmy Hart- He liked him a lot but used to be very klutzy. Lawler had broken his jaw at one point then he broke his wrist. He thinks that Hart started �losing his focus� when he went to the WWF in 1985 because there wasn�t much for them to do there. He warns everyone against being Hart�s tag partner, though, and tells the San Diego Chicken story. In Blytheville, Arkansas, he had to tag with Hart against Koko B. Ware that night. He gives a sidestory about the entrance to the locker room at Blytheville being below the bleachers and that Plowboy Frazier had accidentally knocked himself out walking under there one night and �became wedged like a piece of human cholesterol.� He opened the door to the locker room to see Hart sitting on the toilet in the chicken outfit, with the beak on his head, reading a paper. Cornette asked Hart what the Hell was going on, so Hart explained that he�d lost a stipulation match that said he had to wear the suit for a week. When they discussed the match, Hart brought up the fact that the chicken suit was due back at the costume shop the next day to get out of having to most of the bumping that night. When Jimmy tagged into the match, he came into the ring with the suit on, which had wings and chicken feet on it, and kept accidentally hitting Cornette with the wing whenever he reached back to punch Koko. There was no personal rivalry between them because Cornette saw himself too far down the food chain in the territory to really compete with Hart. The only competition was really between Lawler and Dundee because Lawler had discovered Hart and used him a lot so, in turn, Dundee used Cornette a lot whenever he got his way with the booking.
Austin Idol- Nice guy but thinks that Idol just made enough money that he decided he didn�t need to leave the house much. That�s the only explanation he can think of for why Idol worked as seldom as he did considering he didn�t have alcohol or drug problems like other people in the business who�d disappear or act flaky. His look and promo ability used to be enough to get people into the buildings. �If I could just have a tape of Austin, I�d rather use that to sell tickets then let the other guys work.� Idol didn�t like working against stiff people and Cornette relates a story about how Idol was booked against super-stiff Stan Hansen while Lawler was booked against Jesse �The Body� Ventura, �who couldn�t break an egg� with his moves, and how he could see Idol cowering before he went into matches with Hansen.
Most memorable moment in Memphis- A big one was the last match he had in Memphis, with the Bruise Brothers (Porkchop Cash and Troy Graham) against the Fabulous Ones and Roughhouse Fargo, who was Cornette�s childhood idol. (Roughhouse was Memphis legend Jackie Fargo�s brother, Sonny Fargo, a referee in Mid-Atlantic that would work Memphis during holidays when he�d visit his brother. Roughhouse would do all kinds of weird stuff like going into the first row of seats, eating the people�s hot dogs and then squirting the heels with ketchup bottles, pull the heel manager under the ring then steal his pants, etc.) He was about to leave for Mid-South and figured he�d be back in Memphis soon because he�d fall on his face in an outside territory. Before the match, the guys in the locker room started talking about how they�d have to blade his forehead that night and generally scaring the shit out of him. He was hesitant to blade anyway but said �No, no, NO FUCKING WAY� when he heard that Roughhouse had decided he was going to blade Cornette. When the match finally came around, Roughhouse put Cornette in a headlock and told him to hold still so that he could blade him. Cornette shut his eyes and then Roughhouse ran his thumbnail across Cornette�s forehead. He also relates the story of the Sheepherders (with Jonathan Boyd in place of Bushwhacker Butch at this time) came into the territory and started hearing about what Roughhouse Fargo would do. Boyd�s response was along the lines of �You�re bloody ribbin�, mate! Nobody does that to me! I�m Jonathan fuckin� Boyd!� Roughhouse made them do all kinds of stuff that night such as stealing Cornette�s shoe then hitting one of the other guys on the ass with it and making them sell it, which drove Boyd nuts but the fans loved it. Roughhouse was a HUGE draw whenever he�d come into the territory as Cornette says that Roughhouse could headline a card with no Dundee or Lawler during Christmas week in Louisville and still draw $20,000 despite being 60 years old and looking like crap.
Going to the Mid-South territory- He starts talking about how Bill Watts� territory was on its ass before mentioning that he�d given copies of the Watts shoot to all of his students in OVW. He said that business was down there due to repetition and the amount of huge guys there, etc. Memphis was overflowing with talent because Lawler was booking at the time. �Whenever Lawler was booking, all the cards would start out with a 10-man tag match.� Jarrett was trying to get rid of a lot of people at this time, including Cornette, but couldn�t be obvious about getting rid of Cornette because it would upset Jarrett�s mother, Christine Jarrett. To explain that, he says that Christine Jarrett had allowed him to get his start as a ring photographer in the territory then became good friends with his mother. In order to get rid of all this talent, Jarrett contacted Watts about a talent exchange.
The talent exchange- Jarrett invited Watts up to watch a show Memphis in order to do a talent exchange, offering him anyone in the territory but Jerry Lawler. Watts offered Jarrett anyone but Junkyard Dog. �THANK GOD, for the first time in recorded history since the dawn of man, someone got the better end of Jerry Jarrett in a business deal.� Watts got Cornette, Bobby Eaton, Dennis Condrey, Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson, Terry Taylor, and Bill Dundee as a booker in exchange for Rick Rude �in his first year in the business when he couldn�t stick his thumb in his ass�, Hacksaw Higgins, and Masao Ito. That list of talent that Watts got from Memphis took Mid-South from being on its ass in 1983 to the best year in its history in 1984.
Why Mid-South was so successful in 1984- Featuring younger and more athletic guys who were sold to the fans through the use of music videos, which Jarrett started, was a big part of it. The fact that Ricky Morton was one of the best babyfaces in the history of the business helped, as Cornette does an imitation of Morton selling and mouthing �Help me!� to the audience. Morton�s selling was so powerful that �THEY�D COME OVER THE FUCKING RAIL FOR AN ARMBAR!� On more than one occasion, heels would beg Morton to stop selling so they could make it out of the ring alive. Dundee�s zany finishes were also new to the area so stuff like a Blind Man�s Battle Royal, which was a comedy match in Memphis, was sold to the audience by Watts in such a way that they thought someone would die and were driving ambulances to the arena. Cornette and the Midnights didn�t realize there�d be problems because a Tar and Feather Match was a comedy spot in Memphis but, when they did it to Magnum TA, the fans followed them back to the hotel that night, tarred and feathered Bobby Eaton�s car, then poured sugar in the gas tank. �It was a comedy spot to us because we�d seen it twenty million times. The only times they�d seen it in Louisiana was when they were really doing it back in the 30�s, which did not bring back good memories.� It got worse when they were working with Brickhouse Brown and another black guy and were told to take their belts off, start whipping them, and tell them �That�s what your grandfathers got!� �Well, I�m not exactly up on Louisiana history and, once again, we�d been doing this shit in Memphis ever since I�d been watching. JESUS CHRIST, riot, riot, riot, riot, riot.� The moral of the story is that it�s not what you do, it�s how you present it and sell it. Because Watts and Dundee had them acting in a very heelish fashion while trying to dredge up memories of a past that Louisiana would like to forget, they got TONS of heat and people kept trying to attack them, which drew record crowds to the matches. �You can do the same thing in different places and position it differently and it sells a different way.�
Forming the Midnight Express- Watts had come into Memphis looking for talent and had seen Bobby Eaton as babyface, Dennis Condrey as a heel teaming with Norville Austin, and Cornette as the second-string manager behind Jimmy Hart and was able to come up with the idea of putting them all together as a heel tag team. He never spoke to Watts while he was at Memphis looking for talent but Jarrett had him do a bunch of stuff at the matches that night when he hadn�t been doing anything before, which he feels was Jarrett�s way of trying to tell Watts �Take this fucking guy.� A few nights after that, Dennis Condrey came up to Cornette and told him that they were going to Mid-South and that Watts told them they�d make between $50,000 and $100,000 that year. �After I removed the shit from my pants�, he started ignoring it because it sounded like it was never going to happen. He then says that it�s not who or what you use, it�s how you use them, as Watts had seen the three of them in very different roles but was able to put them together as a great team and drew tons of money.
Working in Georgia- In the summer of 1983 when Georgia was trying to expand into Ohio, they took some of Jarrett�s extra talent to use while the A-list guys were on tour since the only venue in the state that Georgia booker Ole Anderson cared about was The Omni in Atlanta. He said that it was poorly done because the Georgia show from TBS was pulled off of the syndicated stations and, instead, �us putzes showed up from Channel 3 in Chattanooga.� Cornette was managing �The Bounty Hunter� Jerry Novak, �The Angel� Frank Morell, �King� Carl Fergie, and Norman Frederick Charles III of the Royal Kangaroos. He talks about how Morell used to like saying �You ever see $50 of ham and eggs?� to people who complained about their payoffs in order to show them that they could have the bare necessities off of their payday. Cornette also talks about how Charles had gotten booked by Bill Dundee, who hadn�t seen him in years. When Norman walked in, the conversation went like this- �Norman, is that you?� �Hey, Bill, how are you?� �Norman, what the fuck happened to you?!?� As Cornette put it, Charles looked like he was 100 despite being the same age as Dundee. Fergie was the cousin of Jerry Lawler and the Honkytonk Man. Their run there lasted only about two months. He was impressed at first because they had a minimum guarantee of $65 a night, which beat Memphis, but the houses sucked because the fans wanted the real Georgia wrestlers instead.
The Falcon�s Rest- When he was in Georgia, he was living at a hotel called the Falcon�s Rest. Also living there was Homer O�Dell, who was �famous for many things in the wrestling business, not many of which actually happened in the ring�, such as shooting an automatic rifle at submarines in a lake. When Cornette came into the territory, people started telling him that O�Dell was pissed at him because O�Dell used to manage The Angel but that Cornette was doing it instead. He didn�t realize they were ribbing him and was scared shitless thinking about O�Dell in a Nazi war helmet, as O�Dell had a lot of that stuff and �it was a shoot with him� and not just a collectable thing. He made a big point of not being seen so that O�Dell couldn�t find him for the next few weeks until, one day, O�Dell knocked on his door. Cornette about had a heart attack until he realized O�Dell was only there to borrow some salt to cook his stew. �He wasn�t mad at me� he didn�t know who the fuck I was.� Also, while they were there, some of the boys caught a live rodent of some kind (Cornette can�t remember if it was a squirrel or a mink), put it in a trash can, and leaned it on Dennis Condrey�s door. When he opened the door, the can tipped over and the rodent got out and it took him three hours to get it out of his closet.
Mid-South at the beginning of their run- Besides the Shreveport Boys Club, where the TV tapings were, their first matches were at the Municipal Auditorium in New Orleans �where job guys were getting stabbed.� He�d thought he�d had problems with the fans in Memphis but �these fuckers had knives and were boozed up and meant business and believed everything that happened.� They hadn�t even started an angle yet but they had to have a police escort to the ring. When they got their paychecks and saw $900 for a full week of working the first match, they figured it was Watts being nice to them starting out. The amounts never dropped below that level and, between $1600 payouts for working a program with Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II and Watts� talk of them doing a Superdome show, it started to hit Cornette that he really was a part of the business. �You had to adapt quickly when A. you had the smartest sonofabitch in the wrestling business over you at all points telling you what he wanted you to do and B. people trying to KILL you if they could get you alone or without witnesses who were carrying guns." Either you learned what to do fast or you�d piss off either Watts or the fans and, if given a choice, Cornette would rather piss off the fans. �When we did interviews at the studio, he had the CAMERAS scared to break kayfabe!� Despite the fact that the interviews were all done in the same room and that the faces and heels were in there, Watts didn�t want the faces and the heels talking in front of the cameramen under the philosophy of �Are they smart to THE business or are they smart to MY business?� Watts laid the smack down on his territory and, thanks to Grizzly Smith, Watts always knew whatever was going on that could help or hurt his business.
Crazy fans- One night in Houma, LA, Cornette was supposed to be at ringside in a straitjacket for a Midnight Express vs. Rock and Roll Express match. When he saw the rowdy crowd in the arena, he told Grizzly that he wasn�t going out there and, if he got fired over it, so be it. Grizzly then offered to protect Cornette during the match, which was good enough because the fans loved Grizzly to begin with and, besides that, he�s HUGE. That was the only time he ever felt safe in Houma. �Dr. Death and Hercules AS A TAG TEAM could not whip these people.� One night, he and Dennis Condrey actually made it out of Houma without a fight, which was amazing, except that a car full of fans tried to attack them outside the arena. �One of them chucks a full, unopened beer can at Dennis, who catches it, barred his arm, and puts his foot on the guy�s head. It was particularly effective against this individual but his twelve friends didn�t fuckin� like it at all. About the time I was saying to myself �All I�ve got is a FUCKING TENNIS RACKET� I�m gonna die with this tennis racket in my hand��, the Rock and Roll Express pulled their car up quickly so that Condrey and Cornette could get in and escape.
Even more crazy fans- One night in Little Rock, AR, he came back from the ring and noticed vomit all up and down his leg. He wondered if either someone had puked into a bag and saved it for the occasion or if they could do it on cue. The fans in Lake Charles, LA, since security was so tight, would bring in water guns full of Drano and try to spray it in the eyes of the heels. The Freebirds used to have their tires cut by the fans whenever they went to Lake Charles, so they started going to the police station and getting driven over until the fans started cutting the tires off of the cop cars too. On nights when the cops brought police dogs, the fans would find other ways of getting at the heels such as putting superglue in the car locks, putting lipstick all over the headlights, and chasing the cars on the Interstate. Dennis Condrey solved that last problem by pulling out a huge automatic pistol when the cars were along both sides of his van and were about to close in on them, which got them to break pursuit VERY quickly. �I was actually a calm, reasonable, rational person before I started working in Louisiana. Ted Dibiase said he worked there for a year once and his hair started falling out.�
Tulsa, OK- The fans from Hell. Every time they went to Tulsa, Cornette seriously considered quitting. It was quite a contrast from Oklahoma City, where they�d work a morning show before going to Tulsa that night and which had the nicest arena in the whole territory and clean-cut fans. The fans in Tulsa tended to be of the redneck variety, even moreso than other Mid-South cities, and tended to be drunk off their asses and looking for a fight. Without fail, there was a riot whenever the Midnight Express wrestled there, whether it be against Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II, the Rock and Roll Express, Bill Watts and Stagger Lee (Junkyard Dog under a mask), etc. The show before their match with Watts and JYD, there had been a HUGE riot because one moron had tried to get in the ring and got his face split open by a Condrey kick. �Nature Boy� Buddy Landell would come halfway to the ring to help them fight their way back to the dressing room each week. Buddy had the guy in a front facelock with his legs spread, so Cornette kicked a field goal on the guy and sprained his leg in the process. Right before they got back to the locker room, someone jumped from the archway of the general admission seating to try and get the Midnights. Buddy punched the guy while he was still in midair but slipped on spilled beer and they both took flat back bumps. The police already had the guy who had started the whole thing pulled aside in the back and he was passed out, so Cornette started �kicking the FUCK OUT OF HIM, I don�t give a fuck if he�s unconscious.� The only cop who hadn�t been involved in the riot pulled Cornette off of him, then Dennis went behind the cop�s back and started beating up on the guy even more with Cornette�s belt wrapped around his fist. Cornette thought was hilarious because it was a spot right out of one of their matches. Another night, the cops pulled the guys who started the fight into the back and Watts stood on their heads. Fortunately for them, he was only in tennis shoes because Watts later said �SHIT, I should of worn my cowboy boots!� Watts then picked the guy up, told Grizzly to hold him against the wall, then punched him and let the cops take him away. Watts was able to get away with this because �he was God in Tulsa.�
The bad riot in Tulsa- Because one of the people who got the shit kicked out of him was a Highway Patrolman�s son, Internal Affairs got involved and the Tulsa PD was no longer allowed to work security at the matches. They ended up with the county sheriff�s department deputies, which was bad enough. It got worse when the next show was at the Tulsa Fairgrounds instead of the city arena, as it was a big rodeo barn with absolutely no seating pattern. Watts drove to the match in his Rolls Royce and pulled it into the archway of the door that night. Before the Midnight�s match, someone had tried to clobber Nikolai Volkoff with a chair on the way to the ring and missed, breaking the chair over a deputy�s head. The stipulation of the Midnight Express vs. Junkyard Dog and Watts match that night was that, when the Midnights lost, Cornette would get put in his mother�s pink dress. Things went downhill when Watts decided he was going to put on a clinic for the boys in the back of how to sell for the Midnight Express, which scared the Midnights shitless because you DON�T put that kind of a beating on the hometown hero. There was so much heat that night that �If we�d won, they wouldn�t have been able to get us out of there with a helicopter.� It was so bad that guys were jumping into the ring while Watts was making his comeback just so they could help out. Watts beat up the Midnights, stripped Cornette down and put the dress on him. At that point, Cornette was wearing a pink dress, dress shoes, and carrying a tennis racket when he sees four deputies who look at him and say �RUN!� He starts running back to the dressing room and he�s losing cops as he goes along because the fans are tripping them. Eventually, he started windmilling the tennis racket and ran as fast as he could. Once he broke free of the crowd, Jim Ross was trying to stop him from getting near Watts� Rolls Royce because the crowd had started throwing beer bottles at him. Cornette just kept running and all kinds of stuff landed on the car. As far as Cornette�s concerned, the two shows that day did $194,000 in business and, since those were 1984 dollars, Watts could have afforded another few Rolls Royces after that kind of business.
Living in Louisiana- �This was not the garden spot of America.� He couldn�t go out in public for a year because he was afraid of getting attacked. Considering that someone had tried to jump Condrey in a 7-11 in daylight, Cornette knew they had absolutely no problems going after him. �Going out in New Orleans was instant death� because the cops had fixed the security so well that the fans couldn�t get to you at the buildings anymore and people would take any opportunity to get at you in the city as a result. Alexandria, LA, was particularly backwards because it was in the middle of the state at a time when there were no north-south Interstates.
Long stretches on the road- They did 4000 miles a week for 137 straight days with two shows on every Sunday. Around the time they hit 137, they started asking Watts for time off because their cars were breaking down, etc. He gave them every big show off but still sent them to little towns like Loranger and Houma in LA, so that was his way of discouraging days off. He says it pisses him off to no end when wrestlers today piss and moan about having to drive instead of flying. �*blows raspberry* My asshole bleeds� Would you LIKE to see a bleeding asshole?�
Was Watts hard on him as a manager? He thinks he was the only guy Watts wasn�t hard on and it was probably because Watts knew he was always listening and trying to do better.
What was the worst he�s seen Watts do to somebody? He would generally abuse Buddy Landell and fine the rest of the boys but not do anything too bad. He�d mostly abuse the fans because, if he put enough heat on a heel for them to get attacked, he�d go out there and protect them. He says Watts is probably the only person to do that, although he also realizes that few people could get that much heat on heels to begin with. He puts over Watts� abilities as a commentator and talks up how Jim Ross learned under him and is the best commentator in wrestling today as a result.
Buddy Landell and Watts- One night at TV, Watts started yelling at the wrestlers for not laying their kicks in. To show them how to do it right, he sees Buddy�s new Halliburton suitcase and starts kicking it. On the third kick, Buddy bent over and screams �Please, Bill, use my head instead, please!� The reason he�d pick on Buddy was that he �had trouble conforming to rules and regulations� and had a habit of doing stupid stuff, such as rear-ending Butch Reed on the way to a show because he was looking at a girl while driving. �Buddy and Butch won�t be here tonight, they had an accident.� Thinking they were riding together, the locker room asked what happened and were told �They run into each other!� Watts kept Buddy around as a challenge because, if he could fix Buddy, he could fix ANYONE.
Did he take part in booking Mid-South? No, Watts and Dundee took care of all of that. Cornette�s only involvement was keeping track of the finishes in his journals and, whenever they were in a town, remembering which week of TV was airing with which finish so that they would be in synch with what the fans were expecting. (The tape was on a bicycle, like the Memphis TV, and it took 5-6 weeks for it to reach the outlying cities in the territory) He was still green in the business at the time so he just started picking up things by watching Dennis Condrey lead the matches every night in the ring. In order for Watts to get his guys to sell the shows correctly, he�d lay out format sheets with who was facing who and the stipulations that they needed to sell. He told them �You�re not household names� and made them cut an interview about themselves, their opponent, and the stipulation for each match. Cornette admits that having someone tape their fists or wear a coal miner�s glove seemed so stupid but it was those kind of things that really sold it to the audience.
The series of matches with the Rock and Roll Express- The Rock and Rolls were put together as the imitation Fabulous Ones to run on the B-level shows so that they had a team with that gimmick in each town they were running that night. Cornette jokingly refers to the Rock and Rolls as �Fabs Lite� and says that the Rock and Rolls got over so much by looking younger and less rough than the bearded badass Fabs did. While the Rock and Rolls didn�t catch on well in Memphis because of the Fabs, they did GREAT in any territory where the Fabs hadn�t been. It helped that Ricky Morton was one of the best sellers of all time and that the formula with Ricky getting all of the heat then Robert Gibson taking the hot tag was great as well. He says he doesn�t think that the Fabs would have gotten over in Mid-South because they were too much like the fans, as �the Cajun girls would come up to you and say �You gonna fuck me or what?�" and that the guys all carried knives. The screams of the women during the Rock and Roll matches were so loud that they�d have to scream at each other to call spots in the match.
The music videos to promote teams- When he did a show in the past year and showed the old Memphis music videos to his young wrestlers, he had a revelation. �All these music videos that everyone used to watch and say were revolutionary� they�re GAY AS SHIT now!�
The Midnight Express name- When Watts talked to Dennis Condrey about bringing him, Eaton, and Cornette to Mid-South, he asked him if he had a name for a team. Condrey mentioned that he, Norville Austin, and Randy Rose had been called the Midnight Express in Continental (the Alabama territory). Watts loved it and picked up on it. Cornette found out later that Watts did most of the initial talking to Condrey because Condrey was the one Watts knew and that Eaton and Cornette never said anything for different reasons. Eaton�s reason being that he�s just shy and Cornette�s reason being that he was scared shitless of Watts. When Watts started asking Condrey about Eaton and Cornette, Condrey talked both up tremendously, which Cornette feels was Condrey looking for a job more than being confident in Cornette�s ability to talk at that point.
Meeting Dusty Rhodes- They met him at a Superdome show where they faced him and Sonny King. It was a horrible match but Cornette shifts the blame onto King saying that Dusty would do the right thing. Dusty saw money in them because he loved heels and guys who were good heels that drew heat meant that he could wrestle them and draw money. Cornette points out that Nikita Koloff, the Road Warriors, Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, and Ric Flair all got good pushes in Mid-Atlantic because the more heat they had made the babyfaces that much more over and that Dusty was always the top babyface. Dusty made them an offer to come work for him in Mid-Atlantic but he�ll get into that later.
Scaffold matches with the Rock and Roll Express- Watts thought the Midnights would be out of heat by the time their last show came around considering all the things that he�d had done to them from making them wear diapers to putting Cornette in a pink dress. They actually left with even MORE heat because Cornette was annoying , all three of them were smaller than a lot of the fans, and they kept coming back no matter what. That drew more money than the series against Watts and JYD over time because they were doing $30,000 at a football field in Bogalusa, LA (a small town north of New Orleans on the Mississippi border). They�d done previous record business when they beat the Rock and Rolls in a loser-leaves-town match that sent them back to Memphis for three months, got built up until they came back, then drew even more money when they lost the scaffold match series to leave town. Cornette points out that they couldn�t have kept up that heat forever with just them against the Rock and Rolls so one team or the other had to leave every so often. Going back to the series against JYD and Watts, Cornette says they broke the box office records for every venue they ran except the Superdome, which fell $3000 short of the record JYD vs. Michael Hayes match based on the feud where the Freebirds �blinded� JYD. They drew �$1.2 million for 14 shows in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma�, which gets more impressive when you realize the number of sellout shows and the fact that they were beating mainstream performers like Kenny Rogers at the box office for the same venues.
Leaving town- They found out six weeks before they were supposed to leave town, so they called up Jim Crockett to set up a start date. Unfortunately for them, Watts decided to do a talent exchange with Fritz Von Erich and sent them to World Class so he could bring them back to Mid-South easily for big shows. While World Class drew, it wasn�t Mid-Atlantic, which was the big time for the NWA at that point. Cornette points out that the Midnight Express was one of the few pieces of talent that both Ric Flair and Dusty had recommended to Crockett, instead of someone just being one of Dusty�s guys or Flair�s guys. Cornette joked about being in the business for a year and having to call up Jim Crockett to cancel without causing a promoting war over the reason why they couldn�t make it. �I�ve been in the business for a year and a half and I�m having to call JIMMY CROCKETT to tell him we can�t make our start date. He employs Ric Flair for God�s sake.� The phone call sounded like this: �Bill kinda wants us to go to Dallas and work for Fritz.� �Well, it�s not the first time that Watts has fucked me.� �He didn�t mean it PERSONALLY�.�
World Class- Their first night, they worked against the Fantastics. They also worked against them their last night, six months later. They only got four matches against any Von Erichs and it was only at house shows because Gino Hernandez, Chris Adams, and One Man Gang were feuding with them. The other problem was that Fritz Von Erich had decided that only his sons were drawing and, as a result, they got the biggest payoffs and the people who worked with them like the Freebirds got the next biggest payoffs. The Midnights made $1000 a week, which Cornette considers a paid vacation considering they didn�t travel far and got to spend a few nights off each week. It wasn�t as fun as it should have been because �you�d be in the Sportatorium on Friday night and it wouldn�t be a long trip but then the rat would jump off of the rafters and land on your lap��, which happened to him one night and, when it did, he broadjumped the One Man Gang. The only good thing about the whole situation was that they were given free-reign to take as much time as possible on their interviews and say almost whatever they wanted. Cornette took that as a challenge and started cutting 10 minute promos covering everything from the Midnight Express�s matches at every spot show in Texas to what Rip Oliver would also be doing in addition to his own angle against Sunshine. After a few weeks, the production crew came up to him and said �We�ve got a bet in the truck that you can�t keep it under six�, which he didn�t on most occasions. Fritz Von Erich came up to him once and asked him how he was able to pull it off every week. He says that his TBS interviews are the same things as his World Class interviews, only sped up a bit.
The Von Erichs- They weren�t bad people but you could tell they were all screwed up on something. The spot shows did great business but he found it strange that written directions were given to the shows� until he found out that, if the Von Erichs went someplace and couldn�t find the show, they�d just go home. They�d do a bunch of goofy shit like Kerry Von Erich accidentally lacing his headphones into his boots and nearly breaking his neck when he sat up. Chris Von Erich was probably the worst because he was only thirteen but you could tell he was zonked out of his mind. They�d be on a Southwest Airlines plane and it was obvious that Chris wouldn�t have been able to tell you where he was. �None of them were surgeons to begin with� but all the tragedies in that family, due to what they were, on killed the town for years. Cornette discusses how much bigger the Von Erichs were in Dallas than the Cowboys or anything else and that, because Cornette was associated with them, he was allowed to do stuff like go to the largest radio station in town, get on the air, and choose the playlist for the rest of the night. He says the Von Erichs would be told �Sure, you can borrow this Masseratti� and be bailed out of any situation no matter what they did until it got to be too much over the course of three years. It killed the business there for years as it was the hottest territory in wrestling when he was there in 1985 but it had considerably cooled off in 1987 when he came back working for Jim Crockett. For years after that, no one could draw there until the WWF started drawing in the late 90s, which Cornette attributes to either people coming back to the business after all the old wounds caused by the Von Erichs healed or a new generation of fans appearing.
The Shiek and Ohio- He relates a story similar to the Von Erichs in Ohio, as Jerry Jarrett wanted to start running Ohio but, when he went to Cincinnati to get TV time, the station manager popped in a tape of The Shiek�s wrestling show and told him that�s why he doesn�t want wrestling on his station. It was when The Sheik�s show was REALLY bad as he had a snake in his hand and was trying to use it on his opponent. �It was a defanged snake, I think. The snake may have been DEAD for Christ�s sake, and he was blading the guy on camera.� There was no wrestling on TV in Michigan and Ohio for a long time after that then, when TBS was shown in the area, Georgia Championship Wrestling became a favorite in the area and they were able to tour the area and draw big. �All the people who�d watched The Shiek and Bobo Brazil had Alzheimer�s� by that point and a new generation of fans had emerged. �You can kill territories but you can�t kill them for good. You can just hurt them for a long time.�
Coming to Crockett- One of the last straws with World Class was when there was a HUGE show at the Reunion Arena in Dallas, which Cornette worked sick and the Midnights had a great match with the Fantastics. They thought with the kind of house that the promotion drew, they�d be getting $5000 easy. They got $500 instead. Soon after that, the bookers decided to start putting the Midnights vs. the Fantastics in the final slot of the night because they were the best matches yet still paying the Von Erichs the main event money for having the first match on the card and going back to the bar in Dallas before the show was over. They finally stopped realized �We don�t want to work with the Von Erichs, we want to be in the Carolinas!� and gave notice. They ended up working in Georgia temporarily because Crockett now owned the Georgia territory, having bought it from Vince McMahon, and Crockett wanted to build them up separately before bringing them in to face the Rock and Roll Express. While they were in Atlanta, Dusty had a meeting where he told the Georgia talent �I lub de Midnight Express. De gonna be my next tag team champions ob da world. Nobody goes obba da Midnight Express. De Midnight Express goes obba ebery night.� They would even go over in the battle royals at spot shows, which was typically a match where a face won to get a good reaction from the crowd. One night, Dick Slater decided he didn�t want to lose to the Midnight Express and wanted to go a thirty minute broadway. The Midnights were like �Couldn�t we just lose instead?� They were told they couldn�t lose and that they had to do it. After a few nights of that, Cornette was elected by Condrey to tell Jim Crockett about the situation. Cornette found out that Crockett already knew but somehow word got back to Slater that Cornette had stooged him out to Crockett. Cornette wasn�t happy because Slater �used to beat up NFL players in bars in Tampa, Florida, for fun.� When Slater confronted him about it, Cornette told him the truth, which was that he had called but that someone had beaten him to it. Slater accepted it and left him alone.
Dusty as a booker- He liked him a lot and had no problems with him. The one thing that he�ll get on Dusty about, which Dusty himself will admit, was that Dusty was a good booker but his favorite talent was himself. Cornette said that that the best bookers in the business have the primary talent of getting themselves over but it has the secondary function of getting OTHER people over after that, so it pays off. Dusty took care of them, though. He talked about the Starrcade 86 meeting they had before the show in which they were given the finish of both Bobby and Dennis being thrown off the scaffold by the Road Warriors then Cornette would be thrown off after the match. Dusty pitched Cornette�s fall as him being caught �like the guys catch the cheerleaders at the football games� by his bodyguard, Big Bubba Rogers (Big Bossman). Once they realized that wasn�t going to work, Cornette and Bubba improvised Bubba grabbing Cornette on the way down then rolling to the side to break part of the fall, which they�d gotten from seeing a program on skydiving. In execution, �Bobby fell like this *woosh*. Dennis fell like this *woosh*. I fell like this *THUMP*.� Bubba �lost me in the lights� and, the next thing he knew, he was seeing stars on the mat because he�d gone through Bubba�s arms, screwed up his leg, and hit his head on Bubba�s knee. �It was a good thing I�d gotten hit on the head because it knocked me temporarily senseless and acted as a natural anesthetic because I thought I was gonna see a bone coming out of my leg.� After that, he was speaking in falsetto and Bubba could barely hear him saying �Carry me, carry me.� Bubba thought he was selling, so Cornette said �I�m shootin�, I�m shootin��, which Bubba thought was �I�m shittin�, I�m shittin�� because he was green. Cornette finally said �Bubba� CARRYMYGODDAMNASSNOW!� He put on one of Sam Houston�s knee sleeves on it and went to bed that night. When he got up, his knee was severely swelled and it hurt to move even if he didn�t use that leg. He went to the doctor, who drained the knee. He stared out trying to drain it with a hypodermic needle and, after removing three syringes full of blood, finally just drained the rest into a bedpan. The doctor gave him the option of getting his knee scoped and rehabbing it or just getting the nerve endings shaved off so that he wouldn�t be screaming in pain. Cornette took the latter option since he wasn�t going to be doing much in the ring. When he got out of surgery, he was told that he�d screwed up the cartalidge, the meniscus, and his ligaments in the fall so he�d hit the trifecta on that knee injury. �I was like the poster boy for knee problems.� Whenever his guys hurt their knees, he insists that they take longer off than the doctor recommends and is willing to do whatever it took to help out.
Ric Flair- They met him at the Superdome shows. He was a good guy to everyone if he knew them or not. He was living his gimmick as champion, as he was always in a suit at the shows. �He wore nicer clothes in the gym than most guys did in the towns.� Flair, along with Stan Lane, had inexhaustable energy supply and an unbelievably low pulse rate. �If the doctor didn�t know better, he�d swear they were corpses.� Flair was capable of blowing up guys like Magnum TA and Brian Pillman, who was fifteen years younger and had recently been in the NFL. At about 45 minutes into a match, Flair would say �Let�s kick it in!� while his opponent would say �Let�s kick it in? I just threw it up!� Flair also used to do double-shots in which he�d wrestle once in Mid-Atlantic against Magnum TA then fly down to Florida to do an hour broadway against Barry Windham and not even feel it the next day.
Big Bubba Rogers- He was jobbing under his real name, Ray Traylor, when he took a slingshot suplex off the ropes from Tully Blanchard. When people realized that such a big guy was taking a bump like that for �The Wombat�, as Arn Anderson referred to Tully, they realized they had something special. Dusty took him off of TV for several weeks in order to make him seem bigger than life when they introduced him as Cornette�s bodyguard. Cornette mentions that Bubba�s later gimmick as the Big Bossman was based off of his job as a prison guard, which he had as a day job when he first got into the wrestling business. Because Bubba had such an imposing look, fans stopped trying to jump the ropes to get at Cornette. He tells a story about the angle where Bubba was introduced, as Dusty broke a chair over Bubba�s head and Bubba�s response was to just straighten his hat and start taking his tie off. It got him over in one night as a monster. Everyone later realized that one of Crockett�s employees had forgotten to gimmick the chair beforehand so it was pure luck that it happened like that. He calls Bubba a natural worker in that he knew what to do immediately even if he didn�t know why. A big part of the Bubba gimmick was that he�d never speak so Cornette would screw with him before live promos by quickly telling him stuff like �Baby Doll shops in the Junior Moose department.� Bubba would start laughing, so he grew a beard to cover up his reactions. Bubba took his �sell no pain� gimmick to the extreme and no-sold a car door slamming on his hand until he got into the building, at which point he broke down in pain.
Matches with the Road Warriors- When they faced them in Chicago, LOD got excited and beat the shit out of them because it was their gimmick home town and there was 15,000 fans. It didn�t help that �in those days, that music [Iron Man] was the equvilalent of the Undertaker�s entrance� because you�d heard the opening chords then think �Oh shit��. He has no problems with them, though, and they love him to death for taking that scaffold bump. They used to pick on Stan Lane a lot for refusing to take a scaffold bump even though Cornette had taken one. Paul Ellering loved working with him because it gave him something to do, as 90% of the time babyface managers are sitting there with their thumbs up their asses. The absolute best thing about working with them was that the fans wouldn�t jump you when you were getting heat on them because they were pretty sure the Road Warriors would win in the end.
Magnum TA�s car accident- Magnum and Dusty passed them on the way back from the show that night. �Crockett�s parking lot looked like a Porsche dealership.� He figures the reason that Magnum crashed after dropping Dusty off was that it was a winding road. It was a HUGE news story in the area because of the celebrity of the wrestlers in the area and Magnum was on top of the babyface food chain at that point. Dusty was good friends with him and that was why he was brought in at Crockett Cup 1987 to make a special appearance, walking only a few months after they weren�t sure if he�d even live. All the heels wanted to take bumps off of him that night. He�d only been in the business about four years at the time of the accident and was practically a rookie despite being close to the top of the business. If not for the accident, he would have been a champion and would certainly have gotten over better than Sting or Lex Luger. �You would have gotten over better than Luger. Lex would probably tell you the same thing.� He starts telling stories of the days when management wanted to push Ric Flair out of the company. �OK, Flair vs. Sting drew. Flair vs. Luger drew. But Sting vs. Luger died. What�s wrong with this picture? It don�t have any Flair! He could draw with a broom! He could have drawn with a lamp!�
Baby Doll- She dislocated his jaw with a slap in St. Louis. She still blames him for breaking her teeth at a Great American Bash. He says it was her fault because she football tackled him from behind with no warning and, while he was trying to protect his fall, his elbow came back and hit her in the mouth. He also tells the story of how, one time, they were doing a spot at a show where she was supposed to wait until he turned around then give him a worked punch. Instead, she punched him in the back of the head, HARD, before he could turn around. �I watched the replay on TV and it looked like the Kennedy assassination.� He gives Dusty a lot of credit for taking a manager with three years of experience �and a huge moose of a woman� and turning it into an angle that drew big at the Great American Bash in 1986. While Dusty referred to Baby Doll as �my Marilyn Monroe�, Cornette feels that the �Hollywood cinematographers must have taken a little weight off of Marilyn� then. Cornette also observes that, when she came back to work with Larry Zybyzko �and started looking dangerously close to attractive�, she wasn�t over anymore. When she was working with Larry, the guys would look at her and then say �waitaminnit� we�re looking at Baby Doll in a way other than nature intended.�
Keeping things fresh with the Rock and Roll Express- They�d just randomly call old Tennessee spots. All six of them (Morton, Gibson, Eaton, Cornette, and both Stan Lane and Dennis Condrey) had worked Memphis for a good amount of time in their careers and, as a result, had worked with each other extensively and knew a lot of the same regional spots. They�d also invent spots at house shows then use them in front of bigger crowds. In particular, he came up with the referee boxing spot at house show in Tennessee then got to use it at Wrestlewar 90 and, again, at Unforgiven 98. People don�t do that anymore because people script out the matches too much these days. He compares it to Lucha six-man matches, which work until one guy forgets what he�s supposed to do and it all falls apart. �The five most dreaded words in some locker rooms these days are �Call it in the ring.�� (I think part of the problem is the WWE road agents having to pre-approve matches. If good workers were allowed to call more things in the ring, such as playing heel if the crowd hates them when they were supposed to be a face, some of the matches on RAW wouldn�t be so painfully bad.)
Parallels to Magnum TA�s accident- He starts telling the story of Whitey Caldwell, whose memory he honored at his Night of the Legends show in 1994. Whitey had been wrestling against Ron Wright for years, with Whitey as the babyface and Wright as the heel. Whitey was such a pure babyface that he didn�t even let people sell pictures of him because his fans were poor and he didn�t want to take advantage of them. The only one he ever sold was where the proceeds from it went to help a sick girl. After Whitey died in a car accident, Wright turned face the next week in his memory. The same thing happened to Nikita Koloff after Magnum�s accident, as the man who had been Magnum�s arch-enemy had turned face after his career ended. (I think there�s an ancient Vulcan proverb to cover this� �Only Nixon could go to China.�) He honored Whitey at the show because people still remembered him over twenty years after the accident and still put flowers on his grave. They brought in his wife, his children, and his grandchildren for the ceremony and the fans still gave him a HUGE ovation twenty years after his death.
Rick Rude early in his career- When they first went to Mid-South, the Midnights faced the Rick Rude and his partner, who were a babyface team. Dennis Condrey locked up with Rude and they started walking around, bounced Rude off the ropes, locked up again, then Rude tagged out. He found out later that Condrey had tried to tell Rude to run the ropes, jump over Dennis, who would be laid out on the ground, punch Bobby Eaton, and lock up again but was so green he couldn�t get it. He finally got so frustrated that he told him to tag out.
Little things that made his day as a fan working in the business- He worked the LWPA show once where �Crippler� Ray Stevens went to hang out with promoter Wally Karbo. Stevens lived in Charlotte at the time, where Cornette also lived, so they ended up on the same flight together, which was diverted to Atlanta. They rented a car together to drive back to Charlotte, which was a treat for him because he got to spend four hours with one of the best workers in history who was pretty damn colorful as well. One of the things Cornette mentions on Stevens� resume is that �he used to be brothers with Don Fargo� before making the observation that you can only really say that about someone who�s worked in wrestling. He then goes into a Stevens story about riding with Fargo in which Stevens got pissed at Fargo and told him �If you piss me off again, I�m gonna shoot you.� Fargo ignored him and kept on going, then Stevens shot him in the leg with a 22. He also tells a story about how Fargo had gotten his dick pierced and, when people who didn�t know him came into the locker room, they�d see Fargo with a hook on his dick, which was attached to a string he was using to drag a dustpan across the floor. The final story he tells is of Don Fargo, Jackie Fargo, and another wrestler picking up this black hitchhiker then, later on, one of the Fargos would shoot the other with a blank, dump the �body� in the ditch, and then say �Okay, now the only witness is� YOU!� and point the gun at the black guy. They ended up giving the guy a running start then driving off. Later on, they were drinking at a bar when the black guy came running in saying �Call the police! I just saw� *notices the Fargo brothers at the bar* that man get killed!�
Arn and Tully leaving for the WWF- They were shocked because they found out they were winning the tag titles about 20 minutes before the match. The Midnights always got a free pass from the notoriously rowdy Philadelphia fans after that because they�d realized that the title change hadn�t been planned and they�d gotten a free bonus that night. Cornette was depressed about that, though, because they�d never worked with them before and they were already making big money from the weeks where they were barely working with them. They figured the amounts would go through the roof when the angle REALLY got hot and they were working as the semi-main event under �Flair and Dusty, or Flair and Luger, or Flair and a cat��. They didn�t mind working with the Fantastics again after that but the money sucked. He also remembers how Dusty had booked a double-main event of Arn and Tully vs. the Midnights in a cage then Cornette vs. JJ Dillon in a cage. After the title change, it was changed to the Midnights vs. the Fantastics but Cornette vs. JJ was still the main event and it drew $75,000. No one was really sad to see Tully go because he was a pain in the ass. Even Arn had problems with him. People were sorry to see Arn go, though, because everyone liked him and he was hilarious.
Dennis Condrey leaving- The team went to a house show in North Carolina one night and were supposed to fly out to California the next day. Condrey told them he�d see them at the airport and no one saw him again for two years. He�d changed his ticket that Crockett had given him for a one-way to Denver and reappeared teaming with Randy Rose as the Original Midnight Express a year later. They called his wife looking for him and she didn�t know either. They thought she was kayfabing them at first then they realized she really DIDN�T know. Cornette makes a snorting sign to possibly indicate why Condrey left but doesn�t know for sure. They brought Condrey, Rose, and manager Paul E. Dangerously (Paul Heyman) in at the end of 1988 because they had nobody to work with and, before they were hired, Dusty had a meeting with Cornette and Eaton to get approval before hiring Condrey because he�d screwed all of them over. Unfortunately, Turner bought out Crockett right around that time so the office was in turmoil. That was when Cornette was trying to get the whole angle over and, in the process, tapped a major gusher on camera. He�d been told he could get �a little juice� but, since the studio was cold, the blood didn�t flow at first and he bladed twice more before he floodgates let loose. Right after that, they took the feud to the house show circuit and it died a horrible death because of the finishes that JJ Dillon was calling for the matches. He�s not sure if it�s because the angle wasn�t Dusty�s idea or because Jim Crockett was pissed off at one of the Original Midnights, but it got killed by the office. Things didn�t improve when Crockett sold out because George Scott came in as a booker and he didn�t like the member of the Original Midnights that Crockett liked, although he was fine with the other one. Cornette remarks that �George Scott couldn�t book a fart after a dinner at Taco Bell� and was the only person he�s ever known to be an asshole to Bobby Eaton. �It was the greatest angle that we�ve ever did that never drew a fuckin� dime.�
Stan Lane replacing Dennis Condrey- Since the show needed to go on, they started trying to fill Condrey�s slot. Cornette wanted Dr. Tom Pritchard but, since Crockett had just bought Florida and Steve Kiern had retired, he got them to try out Stan Lane. Stan turned out to be a perfect match. After three or four matches, they started becoming, as Brian Pillman later put it, �a bunch of goddamn Air Traffic Controllers.� They didn�t draw the kind of money that the Dennis and Bobby version drew but they had much better matches against guys like Brian Pillman and Tom Zenk, the Southern Boys (Tracy Smothers and Brad Armstrong), and even the Dynamic Dudes (Shane Douglas and WWE road agent Johnny Ace).
Shane Douglas- He likes him as a person but �he takes himself WAY too fucking seriously.� He feels that Shane would be happy if �he could wrestle himself and referee the match.� He didn�t like the whole anti-Flair thing because he feels Flair didn�t keep them down, �their goddamn goofy skateboards and flourescent outfits kept them down because the people hated them because they were putzes.� Johnny Ace has a club foot as well. The only time Cornette�s ever heard a standing ovation for turning heel was when he and the Midnights turned on the Dudes. In Philadelphia one night, one fan had a giant sign which read �Johnny sucks Shane�s cock� and, whenever one of the Dudes was around the ropes, Cornette made it a point to get away from them and say that he was trying to keep out of the line of fire if snipers were after them. In the locker room afterwards, the Dudes were depressed and Johnny Ace started heading for the showers. Cornette asked him where he was going and Johnny said �Well, I guess I�m gonna go suck Shane�s cock.�
His heat with Paul E- Paul is always looking for conspiracies behind everything. The legitimate heat didn�t start until the deal with the Gangstas, Paul screwing him over on a Dennis Corralluzzo deal, and money Paul owes him for tapes of Sunny that were used on ECW TV.
Matches:
Interview from Memphis- Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette, and the Grapplers cut a promo on winning the Southern Tag Team Titles from the Fabulous Ones.
Interview- Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette, and the Moondogs cut a promo.
Interview- Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette, and the Assassins cut a promo on Jerry Lawler and Jimmy Valiant.
Interview- Jimmy Hart, Jim Cornette, and the Moondogs cut a promo on Bobby Eaton and Terry Taylor.
Interview- Jim Cornette cuts a promo about Hacksaw Jim Duggan being like a bum.
Interview- Jim Ross interviews Jim Cornette and Wendi Richter. Cornette makes Richter an honorary member of the Midnight Express. Hacksaw Jim Duggan kicks Cornette�s ass, kisses Richter, then destroys the trophy marking Richter�s honorary membership.
Hacksaw Jim Duggan vs. Hercules Hernandez- Referee Dr. Death drops an elbow on Hacksaw, rolls Hercules on top, then accepts a payoff from Cornette. Duggan was suppoed to get his hair cut due to the loss but Cornette gets his hair cut instead. Duggan does it with a safety razor and a pair of scissors.
Contract signing- The Midnight Express signs a no DQ, no substitution title match with the Fantastics. Right after the contract signing, the Midnights jump the Fantastics and lay hem out with a chair.
Interview- This is Cornette�s first ever in history and he barely even faces the camera in the whole interview.
Interview- Cornette reveals that he�s signed Sherri Martel and the other half of the Ladies Tag Team Champions.
Interview- Cornette tries to commemorate managing Dutch Mantel by presenting him with a portrait of them. Dutch asks Cornette a few questions then ripping up Cornette�s contract and the portrait.
Cornette, Adrian Street, and Miss Linda vs. Jerry Calhoun and Bill Dundee- Cornette ties Dundee�s leg to the bottom rope then Adrian beats up Calhoun.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo on Terry Taylor.
Terry Funk goes crazy, finally half-ripping Cornette�s pants off.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo on Funk and Dundee while Adrian Street primps with his hair in pigtails. (He looks like Kevin Sullivan in drag)
Interview- Cornette throws a party for the Angel and the Bounty Hunter winning the tag titles and ends up with his face shoved in a cake. The Angel ends up piledriving Bobby Fulton on the floor.
Interview- Cornette puts a bounty of $5000 out on the Fantastics for bloodying the Angel.
Angel and Bounty Hunter vs. two jobbers- The footage ends before the match does, as Angel and Bounty Hunter are toying with them.
Jimmy Hart and Jim Cornette vs. Bobby Eaton- One of the Assassins beats up Eaton while Cornette distracts the ref, then throws Hart on top of him. Cornette reclaims the box �full of his mother�s money� at ringside that he�d had to put up for the match. Eaton steals it from him and throws the contents out to the crowd, which causes a minor riot.
Interview- Cornette calls Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II chickens for not defending the tag titles, has the Midnight Express jump both, then they tar and feather Magnum TA.
Midnight Express vs. Mr. Wrestling II and Magnum TA- This goes to a DQ when Cornette hands Bobby Eaton a belt, which he uses to whip Mr. Wrestling II. Condrey and Cornette whip Magnum TA afterwards.
Interview- Jim Ross interviews Cornette about their upcoming match against Hector Guerrero and El Bracero. Cornette cuts an anti-Latino promo claiming that Guerrero and Bracero were working at a Mexican restaurant that served them bad food and refused to give them a refund and, as a result, he wants Condrey and Eaton to take the meal�s price out on them in their upcoming match.
Midnight Express vs. Rock and Roll Express- The Russians jump the Rock and Roll Express to cause the DQ then they cut Ricky Morton�s hair. Terry Taylor and Magnum TA come out for the save.
Interview- Cornette and the Midnights celebrate their recent tag title win over Wrestling II and Magnum by having a party complete with a cake and balloons. The Rock and Rolls shove Cornette�s head in the cake. Cornette gets irate afterwards and threatens to sue anyone he can because the clip has been replayed. Bill Watts comes out to lay down the law and, when Cornette gets in his face, Watts bitchslaps him.
Interview- Cornette interrupts Watts� interview with Butch Reed then he and the Midnight Express kick Watts� ass.
Road Warriors vs. Midnight Express in a scaffold match- This is the co-main event of Starrcade 86 with Ric Flair vs. Nikita Koloff. Cornette cuts a pre-match promo. The Road Warriors do a vignette in which they throw pumpkins with the Midnight Express�s names off of a building a la the David Letterman show. The Midnights lose a chickenfight under the scaffold to take the bump to the mat, Ellering chases Cornette up, then Cornette falls off and permanently screws up his knee. If you turn up the volume, you can hear Cornette yelling at Bubba about his knee being a shoot injury.
End of tape 1
Tape 2
Midnight Express and Big Bubba Rogers vs. Dusty Rhodes and the Rock and Roll Express in a street fight- The Midnights cut Ricky Morton�s hair at one point during the match. Dusty wins it with a spike pildriver on Bubba.
The Steiner Brothers- He�s never had a problem with either of them. He tells a story about how Bobby Eaton is scared of large dogs and that Scott Steiner used to have a big pitbull that he�d bring to shows close to Atlanta. When he booked them for Smokey Mountain, he insisted they bring the dog as their manager. He says Paul E. was scared that the Steiners would hurt him but Cornette says that�s because Paul E.�s a pussy about taking a hit. He has no problems with Rick Steiner or Scott but hasn�t seen them in years and figures if their attitudes have changed drastically it must be because they�ve had �a brain transplant.�
Did Vince McMahon ever approach them? Yes, Vince approached them through Ernie Ladd about a position when Condrey was still in the team in about March or April of 1986. They flew them up to New York for a meeting and they were hoping to hear what kinds of teams they�d be working against and, instead, started hearing about how �the dolls look more like the wrestlers than ever before.� Since Vince was more interested in merchandising than wrestling and they didn�t really get it at the time, they decided to stay where they were. Condrey later claims that he left because they didn�t sign with the WWF but Cornette says he must have stewed about it for a long time then because he left about a year later. He infers that Jim Crockett started making the talent sign contracts about two weeks after that since they ran into Tully Blanchard�s best friend at the airport who noticed them flying to New York. He also relates a story about how he didn�t even know there was a figure of him that was released until relatives of his went to K-Mart and saw it on the shelf.
The Road Warriors turning heel and beating them for the belts- Both teams successfully turned in the same night which he attributes to Jim Ross getting the whole deal over on commentary.
Why did he finally leave? One reason: Jim Herd. �Jim Herd was the biggest prick.� He was a huge bully and �didn�t know shit from applebutter about wrestling or anything else and had Ding Dongs and hunchbacks running all over the place.� Herd didn�t like him in particular because Cornette would tell him what�s what when he got yelled at for things beyond his control, such as pulling Kendall Windham off of the booking sheets after Kendall and Blackjack Mulligan got busted for counterfeiting.
Contract negotiation 101- He then relates the story of how Herd didn�t want to renew the Midnight Express�s contract because Jim Crockett had signed them to a huge guaranteed deal shortly before he sold out. They would get their weekly payoffs based off of the house drawn then get a balloon payment to make up the difference at the end of the year. �I guess they called it a balloon payment because the money was going to drop in his fucking lap from a balloon �cause he didn�t have the money.� They ended up getting $225,000 a year each by the happy accident that they ended up asking Crockett about money, he mentioned new contracts for big money and wouldn�t give and amount, and Cornette happened to mention $250,000 just to be a smartass. He says that Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson were supposed to get guaranteed contracts but Tully found out that Paul Ellering was making $300,000 a year and got pissed off. To screw with the people who had big contracts, Herd had the Road Warriors booked on the road every night in order to work them to death and make them quit and tried to shame the Midnights into leaving by putting them in the opening match jobbing to the Samoans. When it came time to renegotiate, Cornette came in expecting a paycut but Herd wanted to pay Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane $75,000 each and Cornette $100,000 because of his non-managerial duties. Cornette was able to talk Herd up to $117,500 each for Bobby and Stan and, whenever Cornette told Herd �I�ve gotta tell Bobby and Stan not to take $75,000�, Herd would increase Cornette�s pay instead of offering more to Bobby and Stan. When their contracts came up again in 1990, Herd didn�t want to resign them as a team despite their great matches against the Rock and Rolls at Wrestlewar 90 and the Southern Boys at Great American Bash 90, so they decided they want to leave. They were going to let their contracts expire but found out from Wahoo McDaniel that everyone involved in the booking except Herd had voted to keep them as a team and offered them new contracts. �Wahoo said �This is the first time I�ve ever seen people get jobs and be depressed about it.�� When Herd delivered their contracts, Herd made it a point to tell Cornette �You know I was against this�, so Cornette told him �Well, I�m against you so fuck you!�
The final straws- They�d gotten sick of the dumb booking and the poor decision making, such as having an Easter Sunday show in San Antonio, Texas, which is a predominately Hispanic and Catholic town. Cornette had also gotten pissed about Ole Anderson wanting him to wear a pumpkin on his head at Halloween Havoc. When Cornette refused, Ole Anderson told him �Well, Nick Gulas (an old-time Tennessee promoter) would have done it.� Cornette�s response was �Well, Nick Gulas is out of fucking business, isn�t he?� The absolute final thing that did it was driving out to the middle of nowhere for TV tapings to find out that Stan had some singles matches but there were no tag matches then, the next day, coming in to find out that they were scheduled for four tag matches that night. Cornette pissed and moaned at Ole Anderson about how someone could have told Bobby Eaton he could have the night off to be with his family or that they could have done half the tag matches the previous night and was told �If you don�t like it, you can go home.� Cornette then realized that he COULD leave and walked out. He told Stan and Bobby on the way out and Stan decided to come with him. They told Bobby to do the best he could since he had a family to take care of. He says he�d tried to get Jim Herd to buy them out earlier in the year but had been turned down. Since then, the Freebirds had been signed to a big deal and been taken off the road and both Missy Hyatt and the Iron Sheik got their contracts renewed for another year because WCW forgot to send them their releases. Bobby Eaton, on the other hand, got a notice to renegotiate, which pissed Cornette off that they actually kept track of Bobby�s contract while they were paying the Iron Sheik to sit at home. When Cornette finally got his release, Herd wanted language in there that would prevent him from going to the WWF and was told �I�ve just left of one fucking cartoon wrestling federation, I�m not going to another.�
Booking committee- Ric Flair had asked him to be on the booking committee and �how do you turn Ric Flair down?� It wasn�t worth the extra $300 a week to fly to the booking meeting and listen to Herd�s shit, so he quit the committee by telling Jim Ross �If I come to the meeting tomorrow, I�m going to crawl across the desk and put these fingers two knuckles deep in Jim Herd�s eye sockets.� .
Vince McMahon- Everything Vince has promised him as come true, etc. He can�t say the same thing for anyone at WCW since Jim Crockett, Dusty Rhodes, and Bill Watts were there.
Bill Watts in WCW- Cornette was running Smokey Mountain at the time and Watts decided to run a talent exchange. The exchange in this case was that Cornette came up with the Rock and Roll Express vs. the Heavenly Bodies (Dr. Tom Pritchard and Stan Lane) angle, provided the talent for the WCW PPV match, and was paid money to keep SMW afloat. He also sent Watts a few of his part-time guys like Paul Orndorff, who got the job in WCW that he held until the company folded. He says that Watts was misunderstood while he was there because he wanted the top-rope stuff stopped temporarily then let the people who were good at it try again. In addition, Watts was slashing contracts because �Francis Ford Kippela� (former WCW VP Kip Frey) had spent the previous six months increasing the contracts despite the fact that the company wasn�t drawing..
Drawing money in WCW- It wasn�t going to happen because they weren�t thinking properly. �Jim Barnett used to sit there going �Oh my God� how are we going to draw money next month?� I�d say �Nothing, but if we start now we can draw in January�, but they didn�t want to hear that.� The execs wanted one of the wrestlers to say something would draw next month because that�s what the Turner people wanted. If they drew, then they drew. If they didn�t, they�d then be able to blame the wrestlers. Cornette thought the whole thing was bullshit because �They were going to wait until the goddamn end of time as it was anyway but they didn�t want to wait four months.�
Did Crockett miss the boat with the UWF sale? Yes, but partly because the UWF wrestlers were draws in a different part of the country than the Crockett wrestlers. He feels that WCW and the WWF could pull it off since they�re both known nationally but, in the UWF�s case, it wasn�t going to work because each group was mainly known regionally and each area�s fans were going to root for their wrestlers.
The talent exchange angle with Watts- He pitched the angle to Watts on the idea that the only thing any anyone believed anymore was that all the promoters hated each other. Because of that, he�d lend Watts some footage of the Rock and Rolls beating up on the Heavenly Bodies then come to WCW TV cursing about how they were using the footage without permission and that he hated WCW, etc. �People were like �Yeah, he flipped. We knew he would go sooner or later.� The problem was that half the promo was bleeped out on TV because Tony Schivone, Eric Bischoff, and others were screwing around with Watts. �Mark Madden didn�t get Watts fired. I know they want to say that and that Madden, that big, fat, fuckin� piece of snake feces that he is, wants to say that.� On the subject of the �questionable interview� he gave, he says �What was I going to do, come out as an alien invader coming to attack the promotion then say �Boy, this is a great place to work�?� Because Watts didn�t think he was going to be with WCW much longer, he gave Cornette a contract dictating how much WCW had to pay Smokey Mountain. As a result, WCW had to pay it even after Watts left and Cornette became the target of new WCW head Eric Bischoff�s wrath. He says he wouldn�t have asked Watts for a contract under any circumstances because he trusted him and it would have been an insult to ask him, but Watts offered it when he saw the writing on the wall then faxed it to him. After Watts went home, Ole Anderson was in charge of wrestling again and pissed off that Cornette was getting money �because I made more money than him in the 1986 Great American Bash working with Baby Doll.� When he came to the Pay Per View, Dusty came up to talk to Cornette because he�d heard through ring announcer Gary Cappetta that he was pissed off and not coming back. Cornette told Dusty that he never had problems with him but that he didn�t have the autonomous power that he may think he had because of the backstabbers in the front office. He ended up talking to Bischoff, calling him out about the editing of the angle then, which Bisch said something about the comments made on that promo, Cornette told him that he�d already cleared everything said with the horse�s head so that he didn�t feel a need to tell the horse�s ass.
The second time he met Bischoff- Cornette was running Smokey Mountain when Ole Anderson�s son, Bryant Anderson, got released from the Power Plant. Ole called Cornette trying to get his kid booked and Cornette agreed if Ole would cut some promos with the kid. Ole agreed and suggested they do it at the Power Plant. Cornette was happy because having Ole on TV in that territory �is like having God come and bring you a pizza.� Someone told him as soon as he walked in the building that Bischoff hadn�t been there in months but figured they�d see him soon. Sure enough, Bischoff pulls up thirty minutes later �and it�s a twenty five minute drive from the office tower.� Bischoff pulled Ole aside to talk to him but didn�t fire him like Ole was challenging him to do. He DID, however, fire him over the phone the next day. In the middle of all this, Cornette smeared a huge booger all over the windshield of Bisch�s new Corvette just because he could.
Eric Bischoff- �He�s probably a latent flaming homosexual with the cigars he likes to smoke and the Harleys he likes to ride and the fact that he spends entirely WAY too much time around Kevin Nash. FUCK YOU, Bischoff, you�re a fuckin� prick!�
Vince Russo- �Hello Vince!� He goes into the story about how Russo quit the WWF. He was a video store clerk who�d had a part-time spot on a radio show before writing the WWF magazine. He goes into how Russo can�t spell or even speak English but, rather, some obscure dialect from Brooklyn or The Bronx. �It�s not like he�s a goddamn Rhodes Scholar.� He had good ideas at the time when the WWF needed good ideas but that all of them came from the shitty movies he use to rent at his video store and he has no clue about wrestling. That�s why the matches are kept as short as possible because Russo�s completely lost between the opening bell and the ending bell. �People don�t want to see wrestling anymore and that�s been proven in WCW, where they don�t have wrestling matches� they have bumble, stumble, and fall matches. I watched Thunder the other night because I happened to be stuck in a hotel room and I saw Lance Storm falling around like a drunk man. When you do it to that guy, you can do it to anybody.� He goes off in particular on the angle where Terri Runnels had a fake miscarriage and told Ed Ferrara, �a goddamn piece of fuckin� shit� who defended it, that it was in bad taste no matter what and if he was someone who�s wife or girlfriend really DID have that happen and got upset over it because of it being on TV, he�d have personally whipped his ass. He says Russo�s big talent is believably lie about being qualified to do something, such as writing a wrestling show. He also goes off on Russo for what he did to Jim Ross because Ross is the best announcer he�s ever seen and one of the only people who could get Russo�s bullshit over with the fans. Russo didn�t like Ross because Ross would tell him when he was full of shit. Russo didn�t like Cornette because Cornette wanted to do wrestling, which he thinks shouldn�t be a fight considering it was called the World WRESTLING Federation. �Russo, since he probably has a small penis and needs positive feedback�, started catering to the Internet fans instead of people buying tickets. �The Internet fans are stroking him enough that the other marks, the ones running the multi-million dollar company in Atlanta� decide to hire him as the head writer.
How Russo quit- He finally gets back to the point and says that Russo waited until McMahon flew to England for a PPV then went to Atlanta and signed a contract. McMahon came back to do TV in the Meadowlands and found out over the phone that Russo and his co-writer Ferrara had quit even though they lived in Connecticut and could have driven to tell McMahon �They offered me so much that I couldn�t pass it up� but didn�t. (There�s a lot more here but I can�t transcribe it and do it justice.)
Ed Ferrara- He was pissed enough at Ferrara over the Terri stuff but if he�d been in WCW when Ferrara made fun of Jim Ross as Oklahoma, he�d have kicked his ass right then and there. (Cornette spit in Ferrara�s eye a few months back when both were at an independent show. After he did it, Cornette yelled �That was for JR!�)
Vince McMahon- McMahon was a millionaire well before Russo because he had all kinds of stars, bookers, office staff, etc. that were the best at what they do. Russo had no part of that success. He doesn�t like Vince McMahon�s idea of wrestling but agrees with McMahon�s favorite statement, �Chocolate or vanilla, which one really is the best?� Cornette loves his vanilla and wants that chocolate kept as far away from him as possible.
What happened with him leaving a message on Russo�s answering machine? �Vince Russo, if you ever see this, SUE MY FUCKIN� ASS!� After Russo was sent home from WCW for the first time in early 2000, he called an unnamed WWF employee when the WWF was coming to do a show in the area and left his new number on their voicemail. Cornette knew he was about to start working with OVW instead of being in the WWF front office, called the number and, when Russo picked up, he went off on a diatribe. It was something like �I just wanted to call up and congratulate you, you fuckin� piece of shit, for getting sent home for being incompetent� and went off further before trying to give Russo his home number where they could continue the conversation but Russo had already hung up. He called back the next day and Russo wasn�t answering so he decided to leave a message telling him what a piece of shit he was. �I can�t remember exactly what I said but it was one of the better Jim Cornette tirades, directed at him, Vince Russo.� Russo turned around and called WWF Human Resources and tried to get him fired, claiming that Cornette threatened to rape his wife and kill his kids. He says that he hates Russo�s bratty kids but that his problem is with Russo and not them. He goes off on how Russo has devalued wrestling between what he did to the WWF and what Nitro and Thunder are like at the time of this interview. �They can take talent and make it no-talent. You�ve got Lance Storm in a match stumbling around like a drunk man. Lance Storm is one of the most graceful people you�ll see this side of Nuriev� They can�t book a match. They may think they�ve booked one but they haven�t.�
The interviewer stumbles here and asks if he�d rather stay in SMW or return to WCW. �*spit take* I�d rather go back to working at the fuckin� dry cleaners than return to WCW.� Cornette says that it�s funny that Russo actually lost about $70 million running WCW last year and that he could open up a promotion, run ten major cities for five years, and let everyone in for free and STILL not lose that much money.
What would he do to save WCW? �That would be like getting a sodomy charge reduced to tailgating.� He suggests that the company be allowed to die and then, in about ten years, start running shows again in the city once a new generation of fans has shown up. He says that Vince McMahon may buy the assets of WCW but that he�s too smart to buy the company in its present form. (Which did happen, as McMahon bought the tape libraries, trademarks, and wrestlers on short-term contracts from Time-Warner in early 2001.) He starts going off on how everyone wants to be the next McMahon but people who have the money, like Turner, don�t know how to do it �and people who know how, as I have proven, don�t have the money.�
What happened to Smokey Mountain- He �got too big to be small and too small to be big.� Part of the problem was that he opened shop during what he THOUGHT was the bottom of a wrestling recession but it only kept getting worse. The WWF actually didn�t start drawing up until about 1997 so it wasn�t as if people didn�t like his product. Another problem was that they were considered to be paid programming instead of like the old days because the TV stations don�t want to have to sell ads anymore. �They just want a tape and a check� so they can buy the syndicated programs people want to see. He says the way to go is either to work with a television station that wants quality programming or work with a growing station that will grow with you. He says that the transmitter of Lousiville�s WB station, which carries OVW, is so powerful that �it knocks birds out of the sky� and, when they first turned it on, was so strong that the station was channels 31 through 36. They draw some of the biggest ratings the station has gotten so they get prime time specials and so forth.
Sunny- He likes her and Chris Candido. Right before she left the WWF she was being a bitch to him because he was trying to help her and she didn�t realize how much she really needed it. He still likes her better than Sable because Sunny was �an out front cunt� while Sable was �an undercover cunt� and very political. He says that putting a live mic in front of Sable should be a capital offense. �She can�t even act like she�s goddamn breathing.� He started using her because he wanted to book Candido but couldn�t afford to pay him enough to justify moving from New Jersey. It dawned on him that if he paid Candido and Sunny salaries, they could both afford to live there and she turned out to be a natural on the mic. He would rather deal with someone who�s upfront than someone who�s political.
Chris Candido- Fabulous worker. He wasn�t upset at him over the whole deal with Paul E and the tapes of Sunny. Paul E had them over a barrel to do a special on Sunny, since both she and Chris were persona non grata in the WWF and WCW at that time, so Cornette lent them the tape for the special provided Paul paid him $1000. He got the tape back 6 weeks later with no check and they only used about 10 seconds of footage anyway. He was pissed at how they exploited Sunny�s problems because that�s not what she needed at that time. �He didn�t have the dildo ALL the way in but he had them on the barrel and was tapping them lightly on the ass.�
Was he disappointed to the fan reaction to the Thrillseekers (Chris Jericho and Lance Storm)? He laughs about it now, comparing them to the purchase of Alaska, which was called �Seward�s Folly� until someone realized that there was a lot of oil in that land. �I just couldn�t get the oil out.� He says that part of the problem was that this was the first time both guys had been in the US, that Storm brought his wife everywhere and that it hurt his Rock and Roll Express-style gimmick, their wrestling style didn�t mesh well with what the fans expected, and that they weren�t able to sell enough gimmicks to make their pay. He saw them as �pussy magnets� much like the Rock and Rolls in 1984 but they didn�t sell the gimmick enough. �I�m not saying they had to go out and get AIDS but they had to be sociable.� As for their style, he said that the fans wanted hard-hitting action and/or entertaining match and not a Japanese aerial masterpiece. He said it was probably their first time in a real territory and that they were trying to do what they saw on tapes from Japan and that �East Tennessee and Japan have very dissimilar cultures.� He�s talked to both since then and that they�ve come a long way from those days. He�s also realized since then that they failed because he didn�t know how to properly package them in a way to cover up their weaknesses.
The vingettes about the nWo on RAW- �That�s gotten the biggest pop of anything I�ve done in years and it was an accident.� He was on Byte This at a time when nobody was really listening to the show and was asked his opinion of the infamous nWo promo in which they made fun of Arn Anderson�s retirement speech. Cornette went on a long tirade to the effect of �These guys don�t have the resume to pick fun at Arn or Flair� but was a lot more verbose and colorful. He�d already had his share of run-ins with The Clique and �that whole Curtain Call thing gave me gas�, so it was a touchy issue with him when they went after people he respected like Flair. They got more calls about that show than Byte This had gotten in its history to that point so Vince McMahon asked him about what he said. He repeated it and was then asked if he�d say it again on the air. The thing was cleared through the lawyers since it was all factual or opinion, so he couldn�t be sued for libel. He actually apologized to X-Pac when he came back from WCW because he felt he�d unfairly lumped him in with other, more useless, members of The Clique.
Shawn Michaels- Greatest in-ring performer of the 90s but was an immature prick outside the ring. He wishes that �he�d grown up a little fucking bit.�
The NWA Invasion angle in 1998- It was Vince Russo�s idea and he thinks it was Russo�s way of making fun of him and the NWA.
Shawn and Bret Hart during that period- It was VERY tense, as opposed to now which is very happy. He feels that most people were divided into Bret�s camp, Shawn�s camp, or a camp of people who were just pissed off at the whole situation. He understands the hatred but it got to be overwhelming because it was constantly causing problems. If he was in charge at Montreal, he�d have done the exact same thing because he thinks Bischoff would have done whatever he wanted to do regardless of what Vince McMahon or Bret Hart agreed to do. He thinks that Bret should have just bitten the bullet and dropped the belt since he was going to be making an unreal amount of money in WCW, although he understands that Bret didn�t want to leave the WWF but Vince forced him to go to WCW. He feels everyone knew that WCW didn�t know what to do with Bret before he even left. �Look what did happen: They took the hottest wrestler in the history of the business and turned him into a �Where Are They Now?� and in record time.� He says that he understands all sides of the situation and that Vince wasn�t going to go broke paying Bret�s contract but that it was a bigger strain than he needed at that time. �Nobody trusted Bischoff� because they figured Bischoff would exploit signing the WWF�s reigning champion as soon as he possibly could and says that the fact Vince released Bret while he was holding the WWF title shows what trust Vince had in him.
Owen Hart- He compares them to Dory Funk and Terry Funk, with Dory being the more serious one and Terry being the funny one. He says Owen was like a huge kid and would do stuff all the time like shoot him in the crotch with a water gun before a promo, so he�d have to cut a promo looking like he�d just pissed his pants. He wasn�t malicious as much as fun-loving.
Working with Jake Roberts in SMW and the WWF- �Wouldn�t know, he never showed up either place.� Jake only showed up once out of all the times that he was expected to in SMW and that did poorly because the OJ Simpson chase in the white Bronco was on all the TV stations. He feels the problem there was that Jake�s wife was a bitch and that she was telling Jake to hold out for more money. Jake in the WWF wasn�t much better because he was supposed to be a booker but slept through the first Shotgun Saturday Night. He can�t remember if Jake fired or if he disappeared and was told not to come back but �it�s hard to fire people if they don�t show up.�
Living in the Northeast- �I was in jail one time in Baton Rouge and I enjoyed it more than living in Connecticut.� He�s told Vince before that it he moved Titan Towers to South Carolina that he�d love working for him but that he hates Connecticut.
Why he�s not in the WWF right now- He hates office politics and doesn�t like having people �cut my nuts off�, so he got tired of it after Vince Russo kept screwing him over.
What he hates most about the business today- People treating wrestling as a business rather than fun that you get paid for. He tells people who don�t like wrestling yet do it to make money �don�t shit in my pond� because they usually end up putting on bad matches or booking bad TV, which hurts his business when people associate that crap with him. Case in point- Ian Rotten�s IWA. (Cornette launched a tirade on that recently in a Lousiville area newspaper.)
Fans being smart to the business- He doesn�t like it but �am I going to throw a cup of water on the goddamn Chicago fire?� He wants his young guys to have respect for the business and its history. �The Yankees know who Babe Ruth was but most of these guys don�t know who Lou Thesz was.� There�s a lot that you can use from those days if you can adapt them to today�s business. He HATES muscleheads who get into the business just because they think it�s easy money rather than because they like it.
His views on highspots- If you go through tables enough, the fans want you to start going through flaming tables. If you go through flaming tables enough, people want you to have matches using thumbtacks with the AIDS virus on them. Etc.
The balcony spots- �Fuck the balcony. What is this, goddamn sky diving?� If someone from OVW tried that, they�d get fired because either they didn�t tell him about it first or did it without approval. He feels that these kinds of spots are bullshit because wrestling is about doing stuff that you have a reasonable shot of coming away from unharmed, not taking your life into your hands doing a high dive.
Garbage wrestling in general- There�s a market for that but should there be? It has a car wreck appeal but it doesn�t have anything else. �A guy could put a ketchup bottle up his ass and squirt it on some french fries but it doesn�t mean I want to taste them.�
Guys like Jeff Hardy- They were doing daredevil highspot stuff years before they got paid for it so �you can�t say they didn�t like it.� He told Mick Foley one time that taking huge bumps at that point in his career was counterproductive since the fans could see he was a great guy and that they were feeling uneasy seeing him take such pain.
Business in the next five years- He hopes things in the ring settle down because there�s a limit to what�s physically possible and the business seems to be reaching it. It�s just going to get harder and harder to retrain the fans to pop for simpler stuff if you keep raising the bar. On top of that, the guys will have shorter careers if they keep doing that stuff. Psychology and personality will become a bigger part of the business because someone like Leviathan (Batista) will always be more impressive to someone walking down the street and that it will take a lot of work for smaller guys to overcome that without resorting to garbage wrestling.
OVW- Danny Davis started up the school when he retired from wrestling in about 1994 or 1995. He just happened to open the school in Cornette�s home town and went way back with him because Davis and Ken Wayne were the first tag team Cornette ever managed, The Galaxians. He knew that it would be a quality school because Davis was a good worker and had drawn money before so he could walk the walk of what he was teaching. He happened to run into Davis while in Louisville one time and was invited to tour the school. He loved it because the facilities were much better than the WWF had set up in Connecticut when they ran the Funkin� Dojo there. He sold the idea to Jim Ross since they would have proper facilities, live shows, TV tapings, etc. and that with the WWF�s support that Davis could start bringing in superior athletes. This is similar to the relationship that Vince had with Smokey Mountain Wrestling, except that the WWF didn�t need to produce as many homegrown stars back then. �It�s the most I�ve enjoyed the business since probably when I left the Midnight Express.�
Name association-
Eddie Gilbert- �You never knew which Eddie you were getting sometimes.� He had a tendency to tell revisionist history, such as his story about not knowing there was a booking meeting one time in WCW until he walked in a room and saw Cornette. Cornette says that one hurt a bit because he and Eddie actually would ride to the buildings together and were on the booking committee together for six months. Eddie and Flair had their problems, which didn�t help out. Eddie was a bit flighty because he always thought people were messing with him and Cornette says that, usually when you think that�s happening, it�s probably true.
Kevin Nash- His only good match was against Shawn Michaels, �who could have a good match with a couch.� He thinks it�s pathetic that Nash is broken down with graying hair and a potbelly yet still trying to get over as Big Sexy. He feels Vince only got Nash over to begin with because of his look and that he was already on a downhill slide back then. One of his favorite stories is that, when he was asked to teach Rick Bogner and Kane how to be the new Razor Ramon and Diesel, he watched some Kevin Nash matches then told Kane �You have five moves. If you count pushing your hair back a move, then you�ve got six.� Nash once bitched about being the lowest paid WWF champion of all time and someone (Cornette wants to say Gerald Brisco) told him it was because he was the lowest DRAWING WWF champion of all time.
Triple H- He thinks he got in a bad crowd with The Clique and was the one to take the fall for the Curtain Call. He�s heard that he�s a locker-room leader now, which is a change from his Clique days, and was a little surprised Trips was able to make it to the top since he was good in the ring but always seemed to be missing something. He starts talking about wrestlers and breaking kayfabe now and how they�ll say �well, my character is this�, while he feels that many old-school wrestlers like Ric Flair were their gimmicks but just kicked it up a notch in front of the crowd.
Roddy Piper- One of his heroes before getting into the business. One of his favorite moments in the business was when he got to do a promo with Roddy Piper at an In Your House PPV in Louisville. He got bitched at afterwards for not cutting it short but says that Piper talked for four minutes and he only got a thirty second response, so it would have looked bad if Piper had talked then he�d just walked off. When he was asked why he didn�t just do that, he said �Look, motherfucker, I got to do an interview on pay per view with RODDY PIPER so I�ll take my time. I�ll penalize your ass.�
Terry Funk- Another one of his heroes before getting into the business. It�s been amazing to not only meet Funk but also manage him and book him. He starts talking about how he booked Funk against Bullet Bob Armstrong at a Smokey Mountain show and how Funk did the one of the first moonsaults in the territory during that match. After he did it, Cornette asked Funk if he was all right and he said he wasn�t sure. When Cornette asked what it was that he did, Funk replied �I don�t know but I don�t think I�m going to do it again.� He puts over one of Funk�s matches with Jerry Lawler as one of the five best matches of all time.
Best rib he�s ever seen- There�s too many to really rate like that. One example would be that Mr. Fuji used to actually remove the engines from people�s cars. Another time after a show, Stan Lane and Bobby Eaton played a rib on him where they were pouring plastic ants on him and making him think they were crawling all over him. Cornette pulled over and was frantically trying to brush them off with his pants at his ankles while Eaton was running around with four beers, which Cornette says were just for Bobby�s personal consumption. When a cop pulled up, Stan said �Rib�s over� and proceeded to talk the cop into moving along without giving them a ticket. Cornette then brings up how Bobby Eaton has a weak stomach and that, one time, someone threw some gravy out the window and it splattered. When Bubba made the observation that it looked like baby shit, Eaton started puking.
Messages to his fans- �I don�t have any fans. *laughs *�
Where does he see himself in ten years? Still running OVW.
Moving to different parts of the country- In his experience, people from the North like Chris Candido and Sunny move to the South and love it. However, people like himself, Jerry Jarrett, Stan Lane, Mideon, and Henry Godwinn are from the South and HATED living in the North. �They all become anti-social serial-killer types.� At TV, he used to torment Mideon by waving the keys to a house in Connecticut in front of him and said it was like holy water and a vampire.
If there�s one change he�d like to see in wrestling, what would it be? �Just one?� He just wants to see positive changes. While business is great now, it means that only 100 wrestlers are making a great living while the other 900 who used to work in other territories are screwed. He wants to go back to the days where a single piledriver was meant instant hospitalization in an angle because it used to get the same amount of heat as doing a lot of stuff now.
What does he say to people who tell him he needs to get with the times? �If everyone�s doing it then why should I? I�ll do something different, like put on good wrestling.� He won�t ask anyone to do something he wouldn�t do if his life depended on it, like taking another bump off of the scaffold.
Touring his wrestling room- Cornette and his girlfriend, Synn from OVW, show the film crew Cornette�s room full of memorbilia. This ranges from the cast Bob Orton Jr. wore when he was Roddy Piper�s bodyguard (a gift from Randy Orton, who was in OVW at the time) to the blood-covered white suit he wore for the Original Midnight Express angle in 1988 to New Jack�s mugshots. He also has what appears to be a rare picture of Sherri Martel where he claims she actually seems attractive, which certainly pre-dates her WWF Women�s Title run by a few years.
New Jack- �Those are New Jack�s mug shots from Fulton County Georgia. I keep those for personal reasons. Prick�� When he was in his office at the WWF one day, New Jack actually called him up for a job despite all the things he�d said about him in ECW. When Cornette mentioned that, New Jack claimed he was trying to work the Internet fans to which Cornette responded �When you�re working like that, you tend to TELL someone you�re working with them.� He then tells the story of how the Gangstas left him, which was that after a year of booking them in SMW, they weren�t drawing and he didn�t have anything for them so he gave them two months notice and said he�d find them someplace to go. Memphis and the WWF wouldn�t take them, so he talked to Paul E. about it. Paul took them and, after Cornette made him agree not to take them until they finished up in SMW, Paul made a comment to the effect of �Let me know if you fire them.� At that point, Mustapha stopped coming to shows and, as a result, New Jack refused to work anymore. Cornette then goes into how he found them working at the Alpharetta Auction Barn in Georgia, gave them their gimmick, and paid them what he�d said he�d pay them. He let them work with Undertaker and paired D�Lo Brown with them as well. They cut promos on him in ECW because �New Jack is a goddamn idiot and a troublemaker� and that�s why no one will hire him.
Matches-
Interview- Cornette cuts an interview about always having the last laugh, as proven by him and the Midnight Express destroying Bill Watts a few weeks back. They hype an upcoming match against the Bruise Brothers, managed by Jimmy Hart.
Interview- Cornette cuts an interview hyping a future Midnight Express match against Bill Watts.
Midnight Express vs. Rock and Roll Express- This is a Mid-South TV match. The Midnights escape with the title after Cornette makes a run-in, dressed as a woman, and clocks Ricky Morton in the head with a loaded purse.
Midnight Express vs. the Rock and Roll Express in a no-DQ match- Cornette uses an ether-soaked rag on Robert Gibson to give the Midnights the win.
Interview- Cornette explains how he was �cleaning Eaton�s wounds� instead of knocking Gibson out with ether.
Midnight Express and Ernie Ladd vs. Rock and Roll Express and Hacksaw Jim Duggan- The faces win by DQ after Cornette jumps in the ring and starts using the tennis racket.
Midnight Express vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Junkyard Dog in a no-DQ match- Cornette hits JYD in the eyes to blind him and leads Duggan into an ambush by Eaton. Duggan gains the upper hand, Cornette blows an elbow drop on Duggan, and Duggan almost kills Cornette before Hercules Hernandez waffles Duggan with a coal miner�s glove for the Midnights� victory.
Interview- The Rock and Rolls promote their upcoming match against the Midnights where Cornette will be forced to wear a straitjacket by putting it on Robert Gibson. After he�s in it, the Midnights attack and destroy both of them, piledriving Morton in the process. JYD and leads a group of faces in to stop the beating.
Interview- The Rock and Rolls promote their scaffold match against the Midnight Express. Gibson throws a cantaloupe off of the scaffold to sell the dangers of falling to the floor from it.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo about the upcoming scaffold match against the Midnight Express.
Midnight Express vs. Rock and Roll Express scaffold match- Joined in progress. Eaton loses a chickenfight to Robert Gibson to take his bump and then Condrey is forced off between Gibson kicking him and Morton working on his gands.
Interview- Cornette cuts promos on the Fantastics ripping on their teeny-bopper fans and their history of losing to the Midnights in other territories.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo about the Texas cowgirls, �the ones more cow than girl�, and how they�re going to beat the Fantastics for the American Tag Team Titles at the World Class Christmas show.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo about their upcoming American Tag Titles defense against the Fantastics at the Star Wars show.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo about the Midnights� upcoming match against Brian Adidas and Mike Von Erich saying that, if the Midnights lose, the fans will see a donkey flying in the sky afterwards. He also announces he�s signed �Crippler� Rip Oliver so that the Midnights can compete for the World Six-Man Tag Titles.
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo challenging Mike Von Erich, Kerry Von Erich, and Kevin Von Erich, claiming that the Midnights and Rip Oliver will try to run them out of Texas.
Interview- Cornette claims that the Fantastics were allowed to cheat in the Midnight Express�s match and is pissed that their tag titles were taken away after the match.
Interview- Sunshine and Cornette cut dueling promos about their upcoming match. Sunshine makes comments about Cornette�s lack of masculinity and Cornette says that Sunshine�s �been on more street corners than the Dallas Times-Herald.�
Interview- Cornette cuts a promo introducing himself and the Midnight Express to the TBS audiences, as they�re making their first appearance on the World Championship Wrestling TV show.
Cornette throws a fireball at Ronnie Garvin.
Interview- Cornette comes out doing a parody of Jimmy Garvin and produces a poster of a fat woman in a bikini claiming it�s Garvin's manager/wife Precious.
Interview- Cornette cuts an interview putting over Stan Lane replacing Dennis Condrey.
Midnight Express vs. the Fantastics for the US Tag Titles- This is from the first Clash of the Champions, which ran head to head against Wrestlemania 4 on free cable, and is one of three great matches that night. The other two are the first Sting vs. Ric Flair match and the Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard vs. Lex Luger and Barry Windham World Tag Title match. The match ends in an Dusty finish as the Fantastics apparently win the belt before Randy Anderson DQs them for throwing him over the top rope. GREAT brawling match.
Thoughts- If you didn�t already know my thoughts going in, I�ll reiterate them� this is the gold standard against all shoot interviews are compared when I do my rankings. Cornette is honest, controversial, and HILARIOUS all at the same time. On top of that, he fit more information into the first half of his interview than several of the interview subjects did combined. The match footage is above average, as there�s a wide range of promos in addition to matches between the Midnights and Rock and Rolls that have probably not been seen much since they aired in Mid-South. The icing on the cake is the Midnights-Fantastics match, which is arguably the best match on a completely stacked Clash of the Champions card and lightyears better than the best match on Wrestlemania 4, which it went head to head against. In short, if you can find a better shoot interview than this, I�d like to see it because it would be an accomplishment. Highest possible recommendation, with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
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