Jim Cornette Interview

[Nefercheperur]

Jim Cornette war am vergangenen Freitag bei The Wrestling Channel zu Gast und gab ein Interview.Der Text stammt unten von Mark Pickering der denn Text fuer den PWInsider schrieb.Das Interview ist denke ich sehr interessant,auch wenn ich mit vielen dingen nicht mit Cornette ueberein stimme wie haeufig ;) .Es ist zwar sehr lang lohnt sich aber doch


Blake questioned Cornette about the OVW-WWE link-up and Jim's role in the developmental system.

"Let me start from the beginning. Five years ago I was living in Stamford, Connecticut, working in WWE office -- and a lot of the work I was doing was going to different independent events and looking at new talent and trying to scout people that you know are the future of wrestling. At that point in time I re-met and old tag team member of mine Danny Davis, who I managed as one of the Nightmares. He had a school here in Louisville, Kentucky, which is my home town. So the concept was let's make an official developmental system. Memphis was already a loose development system in that they had a promotion there and the WWE would sign guys and send them there to wrestle in front of people and get experience. But there was no wrestling school or training facility so we put it together that I could move back to Louisville and we could have a full service down here where we train the guys from scratch or they've been in the business for a while and they get signed by the WWE they come and see what we do, they get comfortable with the style. We take students of our own from our school and some of the have been awarded contracts. So basically we have a full service training facility. We run live events, we have a weekly television show, we have a full-time training center and several different classes."

Blake asks Cornette about the impact he has on choosing which talent are brought up from OVW to WWE.

"We can make recommendations and it's up to a lot of times the creative team and I'll be honest it's chocolate and vanilla; some people think this guy's ready and some people think that guy's ready. It comes down to what they want to put on television and that everybody tries to make it work."

Blake questioned Cornette on which talent he thinks we will soon see on WWE TV.

"Well I think Nova has done a tremendous job here so far. He's wrestled all over the world and I think he's been ready for sometime and just the right spot has not been available, but I think at anytime something could happen for him. Nova is a completely different person now (from his ECW days). Also Matt Morgan who had a brief time on the full time roster, the kid is a tremendous athlete, as strong as a bull. He's really improved the last several months and I think is going to be a player. Matt Cappotelli, the kid that won Tough Enough, Jonny Jeter who is the personal prodigy of Nick Dinsmore who's now the most popular human in the world. This kid is only 22 and he's been working for three years and he was a natural to begin with. You've got a lot of kids down here who I think are going to do something; Alexis Laree on the female side."

Blake asked Cornette his thoughts on the Tough Enough concept and the talent that went on to the WWE.

"We've turned down a bunch of people who wanted to do documentaries at our training center and want to disguise some guy as a professional wrestler and train a guy over a weekend. I hate the promotions that do that and that stinking Rick Bassman out in California, every time you turn on the television in America you see a documentary on wrestling schools and it's always Rick Bassman who's a crook and I've said so and he can sue me if he wants to. Do you ever see a documentary on magicians? When they're learning their tricks, when they're executing them and trying them out and they don't work, but you see how they're done. Too me it's distasteful, I hated the whole idea of Tough Enough being on television. I'm all in favor of finding talent, I'm not in favor of showing a wrestling school on television."

Blake asked Cornette what he thought of the Elite Pro Wrestling training program, setup by Les Thatcher, Harley Race and Ricky Steamboat.

"Well now that you've said Les Thatcher, Harley Race and Ricky Steamboat, three of the people I do respect in this business I will respectfully disagree and I don't like it because it's like 'train at home, a 2 week course.' Would you want open hear surgery by a doctor that passed a trained at home course. A train at home course is not going to make anybody a professional wrestler. It's ridiculous. All it does is show everybody that they think it's easier than it really is because people used to think it was more difficult than it was. Now they think it'd easier than it really is. We've gone completely the opposite way. Every Joe Schmo at bake n shake thinks he can be a pro wrestler and you can't. And that's why in large part guys come into the business these days with a very different outlook then guys had 20 years ago and it hampers them in learning how to be good at what they do."

Blake asked Cornette how his affiliation with ROH began.

"I'd known Rob Feinstein for ages because he always used to sell a bunch of tapes of whatever promotion I was doing and after I caught him the first time he started giving me money for it (laughs). I've known Rob and he was involved at the time and they were in Dayton, Ohio, which is like three hours from my house. He asked if I'd like to make an appearance at the show in Dayton and I said 'oh yeah OK I'll do that.' And the guys worked hard, the crowd was fun and so then he asked me to come to a bigger show in New Jersey and I don't fly anymore so that was a 1400 round mile trip for significantly more money but I had a good time also. I did a few things for them. And then Rob had has public relations trials and tribulations and Gabe Sapolsky who is the ROH booker has been real good with me also. It's like on of those situations where you know a bunch a people and all of a sudden they start arguing with each other. I'm building a house here in Louisville that's taking up a lot of my time, OVW takes up a lot of my time, I don't fly and I don't have time to drive a lot of places, I've just been busy and I told them, I said 'look, don't say never but not right now, let my get my house finished then we'll work together again.' And that's for the new ROH, I've got nothing against Rob. There's no heat I've just had not had a chance do really do anything and I'm doing it mainly to have fun."

Blake asked Cornette about the 'Strong Style' sweeping the American indy scene.

"Everybody wants to have the next breakout style. We can talk about the dogs making love in the street. You're going to watch that for about 30-45 seconds depending on who you are but even that gets tiresome. Car wrecks, big car wrecks -- everything blows up, people running screaming while on fire, heads flaming. You're going to watch that; but if it goes on for twenty minutes you get bored. You can sit down and read a book or watch a movie with a story and that will hold your attention for a lot longer period of time. I just think there's no replacing, you can modify, you can tweak but it comes down to two guys or whatever that people care about, that are mad at each other, that are fighting for something and you tell them a story. And it doesn't matter how technical your wrestling is or how hard you hit somebody or if you have 16 tables in the ring. It depends on whether they care about what you're doing."

Blake asked Cornette what he thinks WWE needs to do to turn business around.

"What you've got to remember is they're still on top. They're the biggest company in the world. The problem is that when you have a boom, every great peak is followed by an equally distant valley. In this business it's a cycle. Now that the main promotion is a national, worldwide promotion the peaks and the valleys come all at the same time. There's never being a period of wrestling when wrestling was selling out everywhere, all the time, every time. The company now is in a valley because the stars are not hot. See Vince Russo tried to take a lot of credit. The only credit I give him is for destroying the wrestling business. He tried to take credit for putting the WWE attitude over. He was overlooking the fact that he had Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, two off the hottest stars ever to come up, the two hottest, both at the same time. You could have read cooking recipes on the television show and it would still drawn because it's a talent driven business. Vince Russo didn't do anything but hamper the undercard that couldn't stand up to him. Now you are always in between stars. There was no star between Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin in that period of the early 90's. Instead of hurrying people, instead of rushing people now if a start isn't there you can't make one. You can help them along but if Steve Austin had been Steve Austin and the Rock hadn't been the The Rock the pushes they got wouldn't have helped. It takes a creative push and it takes a talent".

Blake asked how big a loss Cornette thought Brock Lesnar was.

"Truthfully, not really. I'm not Brock's CPA so I don't know how much money means to him. Brock goes up there and he becomes the champion and then he's suddenly surprised and thinks he won't see his family enough. I don't understand why he wasn't prepared for that. It's like paying to see a movie and leaving halfway through".

Blake asked Cornette his thoughts on WWE putting Benoit and Guerrero on top come WMXX.

"I thought it was one the greatest things I've ever seen because I think it meant more to a lot of the boys than it did to the fans. Here you've made the statement that of the two major wrestling champions in the world both of them are the most respected guys in the ring amongst their peers. Rather than there because they cut a great promo or great body or the Ultimate Warrior for God sake, or Sable. Empty silicone or surgically enhanced body with no brain and no talent. No here's the two guys that can tear the house down with almost anybody, every night. They grew up loving wrestling, I think it meant more to the boys than it did even to the fans".

Blake asked Cornette what he thought of WWE's decision to pick up Goldberg and his thoughts on his WWE run.

"The guy was a huge star so I think the decision to hire him was valid. There's money been left on the table there. I don't remember meeting Goldberg so I don't want to knock a guy I've never met. He doesn't have a burning desire to want to be a wrestler from what I've heard, from what I've read. I haven't talked to him about it so that's just what I've heard. If guys don't really want to something then they should let the guys that really want to do it, do it. I mean the guy got to be a huge star in WCW and he'd have been so much bigger if they knew how they got him over and what to do with him when they did".

Blake asked Cornette what he thought of the idea to expand the number of PPV's.

"I don't know what the figures are because we're sitting down here in Louisville. I think there is a limit to what you can do and the problem with PPV's is that you have to plan do far ahead. I like the one a month myself because it's easy to keep track of, but at the same time I don't know of any that have lost money yet".

[Nefercheperur]

Blake asked Cornette if he has any interest in being on camera again.

"Absolutely not. After September 11th I stopped flying, I've been looking for an excuse for years. I've traveled for 20 years, I'm building a house here in Louisville now, I very seldom leave the town and like it that way. I did too much for too long and this way I'm here I'm at home I'm doing a wrestling show every week, I couldn't be happier if you gave me four times as much money I wouldn't go anywhere else".

Blake asked if Cornette would like to expand OVW and questioned whether he's happy with the WWE link-up.

"Right now we're basically in Kentucky and Southern Indiana. I would love if the stars were lined up just right to be able to get television in say Hunnington West Virginia and run a nice big show once a month. Maybe that'll happen in the future and I'm sure WWE would be proud of us if we did. We just concentrate on small operations and we concentrate on trying to take care of our area and do what we need to do and at the same time not make it too complicated. The worst thing that you can do in the wrestling business and the way that everyone has lost money is that you can either be too small to be big or too big to be small and then your screwed".

Blake asked if Cornette was familiar with the NWA:TNA product.

"Unfortunately yes. Vince Russo is on camera as a talent and I feel no need to pay $9.95 American money for the right to be just pissed off in my own home. If I have to look at his face then that's going to cause me to break stuff. So I never got one. Then I was taking some time off a couple of months ago and there I was sitting on the couch and there I was, so I ordered it. And I would like to say the production is amazing, the lights and the set and all they stuff they do. I don't know about the six-sided ring now, this was before that. They'll reinvent anything. But it was absolutely without a doubt the most abysmal putrefying all-inspiringly bad big budget wrestling show I've ever seen in my life. The matches made no sense, they went on forever, they went nowhere, they fell apart due to green guys trying a bunch of stuff that nobody understood even if they were sitting there with a notepad trying to keep track of it, because that Russo's idea of surprising people because he's a moron. Jerry Jarrett I have a ton of respect for, he started me in the business, he was a tremendous promoter, a genius in the wrestling booking department. Jeff I've known for 20 something years, he's a great kid but Jeff Jarrett is not a guy to build a promotion around. I can understand because it's his promotion partially that he wants to make sure he cant walkout on himself, that's a factor. Still, take this dollars that they're spending on PPV's and start a territory in Nashville and Alabama and Mississippi and part of Georgia and you could run forever.

Blake asked Cornette his thoughts on wrestlers scripting out their matches.

"It's ridiculous. Wrestling is performance art. This is so hard to explain to people not involved in the business and even to some guys that are in the business. If you go out and plan to do one particular thing whether it be sing a song or cook a dish or throw a football or whatever and you plan to do it a certain way and the crowd that you are there to entertain and please doesn't like the way your doing it do you continue to stick it down their throats because that's the only thing you know how to do or do you go out and learn to feel them ala Ric Flair and lead them and see what they're buying and give it to them. The greatest matches in my opinion of modern time were Flair and Steamboat, they would talk for 5 minutes, 'OK see you out there' and they'd go out and they'd feel it and people were up and down, into it".

Blake asks where are the next Austin, Rocks going to come from and if there are people out there worthy of an opportunity.

"Yes and I don't know who they are. You can always say that kids going to be a big star, then they never get the job so they never get seen but they had the ability. Then you have guys who can't carry their push. Nobody would have said when Steve Austin was a Hollywood Blonde that that kid's good, he's going to be great. The Rock when he was Rocky Maivia when he came out of Survivor Series with the hair and everything, you saw the look, you saw the talent, you saw the ability, the kids going to be a big star. Make $20 million in the movies, no you crazy. You can't predict the next big star. That's why you should give everybody with talent a chance. And that's also why you should be very careful about pushing people that don't have the dedication to stick with it. Look at the Rock, he still comes back, he's a movie star for Christ sake. He still comes back and does RAW because that's what he loves, he grew up in the business. So anyway, the next big star is out there. The job is to find him, give him the spot to let him do his work and then the people decide and of course when all that easy stuff happens you've got a mega star".

Blake asks if Cornette has a much fun now that most of the audience are much smarter these days.

"Definitely not, it's not the same. I mean you could feel the people than wanted to kill you and feel the people that loved you. Here in Dallas they would drag the Von Erichs off the ring apron and the fans were hugging them trying to get a piece of their jacket or anything. And of course the heels would get knifed and chased down roads and shot at. That was fun. Now you can feel the difference. It's a shame that the kids now don't get to feel the atmosphere that we felt, you could feel the emotion in the building, it was so strong. That's something that Russo will never know about. Anybody that was never a performer in professional wrestling of some description has no business telling the people that get in the ring to do the stuff they're doing".

Blake asked what the fans perception of the business will be in 10 years time.

"For the people that analyze that much and a lot of people on the internet that don't have girlfriends and things of that nature, I'll go ahead and say it, I love controversy. When I was kid we loved wrestling, we read magazines, went to shows, we took pictures, we got autographs. But we didn't sit there and analyze, 'oh he scooped the arm drag on the hiptoss from the hurracanrana'. For Jesus Christ sake and plus we didn't know what we were looking at. Jerry Lawler and Terry Funk, holy mackerel; did you see how he managed to do that, it's ridiculous. The vast majority of the audience doesn't want to do that, they don't want to delve that deeply. They want to come, sit down have a beer in the arena, bring a sign, see some guy get whacked with a chair, see their hero win something and go home. That will always be a part of wrestling. But as more and more people find out more and more things more of them just go away from it, because it insults their intelligence now. That's the problem. So you have to make new fans and hopefully the new fans will appreciate the new style, now that guys won't be in the hospital needing neck surgery".

Blake asked if promotion trying to introduce new styles to stay ahead of the kayfabe.

"Once again you can make anybody believe anything. I'm serious about this. I'm not saying that to be a wise-ass. You can make anybody believe anything if it's presented logically and rationally. And that is the basis of wrestling. I like this person because I either want to be like him, admire him or would like to hang out with him or I hate this person because he pisses me off or represents everything I don't like. And I want to see them fight, but why are they fighting. There's got to be some reason. Ah, because so and so wants so and so's championship belt. Now I know why they're fighting and the winner gets something. That's all you need to do. They have made it so complicated. Guys now get into the business so they can become promoters just to sit in the locker room with the guys, they don't know how to run a show. They just overdo everything to outfox themselves. The reason why I went to ECW once was as a favor to Chris Candido. Candido calls me, he says 'I need to ask a big favor can you make it to an ECW show'. I thought he was kidding me. I said Chris your out of your mind I don't want to come down there and do that. 'Well it'd be a favor for me and would really get me over with Paul because he needs a surprise for every show'. Now every show people expect a surprise. I said Chris would have you just said, if the people expect a surprise it's not a surprise. The very textbook definition of surprise is shocking unforeseen event. Your telling me now that this stupid son of a bitch that's running this company has to pay a major superstar to come in to be on his show every time he runs them but he can't advertise them because he people won't get a surprise."

Blake asked Cornette for his closing comments on the state of pro wrestling today.

"I think for all the guys that want to be wrestlers and we need more of them, the opportunity is there to make more money than ever before but the spots are harder to get. For all the guys concentrate on your strong points accentuate your strengths, try to hide your weaknesses, don't get too complicated and look at what the guys you admire in the ring do and try to emulate them. I would loved to have been a billionaire. Billionaire was my first job choice before wrestling manager. Wrestling manager was actually number two. I wasn't qualified so therefore I went with number two. Guys should do it for fun and if your really good at it keep going and try to get noticed. But don't kill yourselves just to get noticed. Just try to emulate guys that have been there, be honest with yourself and you cant go wrong."

[The Chosen One]

Ein wirklich sehr interessantes Interview, wie es aber aussieht kann Cornette auch keine Talente nennen, die den Durchbruch schaffen können, was bezeichnend für den momentanen Markt ist.

[ITALIA]

Habe dieselbe Meinung wie ChosenOne...es gibt leider nicht mehr so viele Talente wie vielleicht noch Mitte der 90er Jahre. Der große Boom ist vorbei...und wenn dann eben noch Talente wie Rocky oder Lesnar gehen, bzw. die WWE die ziehen läßt, ja dann darf sich nicht wundern. Talente wachsen ja nicht auf den Bäumen...ich wiederhole mich gerne nochmal...spätestens in 3 Jahren fährt die WWE mit den beiden Shows gegen die Wand weil einfach zu wenig gute Wrestler da sein. Und das OVW hat wirkliche Schwierigkeiten halbwegs gute Wrestler zu finden...die meisten werden nach ein paar TV Auftritten wieder zum Training geschickt....das sagt alles!