26.07.2004, 15:37
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."