Jim Cornette Shoot Interview 2003

[Guest TSMAdmin]

No intro this week... I spent too long writing up and coding the shoot this week, so I can't say too much.

 

 

Next week's shoot will be a repost, probably Bret Hart's 2001 shoot interview.

 

 

As always, you can feel free to Drop me an e-mail, read the archives, buy me stuff, or <!-- Begin Affiliate Code --> buy yourself stuff at Highspots.com.

 

 

 

Jim Cornette Shoot Interview (8-8-2003)

 

How he got involved in Ohio Valley Wrestling? He knew Danny Davis from his Memphis days, where he managed him. He ran into him in 1998 when he was in Louisville for Thanksgiving. Davis asked him to look at the school, which he loved. Davis had both a school and a promotion at that time and had already trained “Iron Man” Rob Conway (currently in La Resistance), Nick Dinsmore, and “Machine” Doug Basham. Cornette then went to WWF Talent Relations head Jim Ross and told him that they needed to put money into OVW as a developmental territory because they had a school taught by a trustworthy person, they had weekly TV, they ran live events, and that Cornette was “willing” to move back there to run it for the company. (Cornette had gotten tired of Vince Russo and his bullshit by that time ) Cornette moved back to Louisville in July 1999 to start running the booking and talent portions of the promotion as a six-month experiment to see if his plan was feasible, which it has been because they’ve been there four years now.

 

What’s a typical week like in OVW?

 

For Cornette- Wednesday is the TV tapings. Thursday is his non-wrestling day where he tries to get wrestling completely out of his system and relax. Friday is his phone call and paperwork day. Saturday is usually a house show day. Sunday is a house show day were he also does paperwork. It’s also the website day, which he reiterates is NOT something he does but, rather, something he helps the tech people with. Monday and Tuesday are the writing days.

 

TV- Danny Davis does all technical aspects such as music, post production, etc. Cornette does all writing, voiceovers, production, etc. They’ve also got some of the locker room leaders well-trained to help out with the younger guys. Nick Dinsmore and Rob Conway help out the young guys now. Doug Basham and Damaja (Danny Basham) were in that role before they started up on Smackdown. They try to encourage the older guys to help out the young guys and discourage petty bickering like “You’re taking my spot!”, etc.

 

The environment of a wrestling school- It’s all in what you make of it. If you have a negative environment, everyone starts bickering with each other and no one helps anyone out. They create an environment where everyone feels as if the fit in and they all help out. “We don’t have 15 cowboys and no Indians… we have a cowboy, an Indian, a doctor, a lawyer… we have a spot for everybody.”

 

Multitasking at work- In addition to Cornette and Davis doing multiple things, other members of the crew help out. Referee Robert Brisko helps promote the house shows. Cameraman Tim Ash also sells sponsorships and helps work out deals with Six Flags Over Kentucky, which hosts their big shows every few months. Manager Kenny Bolin does a little bit of everything and is a natural salesman. He also tries to hook name groups within the territory onto people who won’t leave, like his girlfriend Synn or his good friend Kenny Bolin. Since they have revolving talent, it makes sense to do things like that because it means there are no set members of those groups and that there can be any number of members involved. Another thing that works is someone like veteran Nick Dinsmore giving approval to Johnny Jeter as his protégé, as the people watching the show have seen Dinsmore there forever and that approval helps Jeter get over quickly. He believes that wrestling is about the established guys giving a leg up to the new guys “but you gotta be picky and choosy about that sort of stuff. You can’t just pick any schmoe and give them a leg up… they’ve got to be ready.” (This may be a veiled comment about WWE talent decisions, whether they be callups from OVW or dumb things they’ve done on their own)

 

What are some of the advantages to being a WWE developmental territory? First, he’ll go off on Wade Keller.

 

Wade Keller- A guy who writes for the Pro Wrestling Torch e-mailed the OVW site asking him for a quote about Ian Rotten for a story he’s writing (This deals with a newspaper editorial Cornette had written blasting Ian Rotten’s IWA as a collection of garbage matches that make it harder for him to run a legitimate territory). The quote Cornette sent back was “As big as a disgrace Ian Rotten is to wrestling, your boss is to journalism” and that the only quote he’d ever give to the Torch would be on the passing of Keller. In response, Keller is reporting in an upcoming issue of the Torch that OVW will be closed down by the WWE so that they can open up a territory in New England. Cornette shoots that one down right away, saying that OVW was a company before the WWE ever got involved and that they couldn’t shut it down. The only thing that the WWE could cease doing business with them and that’s it, although it would be a very bad thing if they did it. He says that Keller’s had it in for him for ten years now and that Keller makes up the majority of his stories. To prove his point, Cornette starts spinning a story on Rob Feinstein, who’s sitting in the room, to sound like a Torch story. (The actual “story” is that “Keller” saw Feinstein outside of a Kentucky Fried Chicken that was later robbed and that, on a previous occasion, Feinstein had worn an “Eat More Chikin” shirt. Using that evidence, “Keller” infers that Feinstein robbed the KFC.) Cornette says he doesn’t know exactly how much of OVW’s operating expenses are covered by the WWE, but guesses it’s about 15-20% and that the rest comes from sponsorships and other sources that they generate.

 

Getting back to the original question, Cornette says that the advantages to the relationship are that the WWE pays them, provides talent to be trained, and they get better stars to mold. The WWE gets trained wrestlers who don’t stir up shit, etc. He makes them feel like they’ve earned it by the time they make it there because they have to put up the ring in Mudlick, Kentucky, for a house show and realize that it’s not going to be Easy Street. His philosophy is that if you don’t love the business and are only doing it for money, “get the fuck out of my business” because they ruin things for everyone else.

 

Restrictions from the WWE- They’ve never been in the position to be restricted, partially because he’s not going to do something stupid like have a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match then have to call up Vince McMahon the next day and detail the injuries that the WWE will be paying for on guys who are under WWE developmental contracts. He is much more interested in wrestling, making wins mean something, personal issues, etc. He feels that it’s not what you present to people as much as what you condition them to and their fan are conditioned to old-school wrestling. He brings up how the recent Loser Leaves Town match between Machine and Damaja got the crowd hotter and more excited than any garbage match he’s ever seen. Because they emphasize wrestling instead of risks, no one has ever had to call him and say “Don’t do that again.”

 

What does the WWE require from their developmental territories? It’s attendance figures, who’s there, who’s not, who’s late, who’s jacking off in the back, etc. It’s pretty much for Jim Ross to get an idea of someone’s work habits before they reach the big time. They don’t care about the physical stuff as much as the effort being put into things and how much they’re improving. He outright says that he doesn’t agree with all of their talent decisions but “chocolate and vanilla.” (That’s a reference to the last interview where Cornette brought up how that was Vince McMahon’s favorite statement because it’s a way to say “People like some things better than others but no one’s wrong for doing it.”)

 

Who does he deal with from the WWE? It’s Jim Ross, Dr. Tom Pritchard, Johnny Ace, and others. JR has been doing many things including writing Steve Austin’s book, announcing, etc. so other people within the company have been taking over some of his duties.

 

 

People who came through OVW-

 

Brock Lesnar- He saw Brock as a great athlete but not a natural pro wrestler. Brock had never been much of a fan, had an amateur background which gave him a different mindset than pro wrestling, and didn’t take to it naturally. He could perform the moves but couldn’t pick up the what, when, why, etc. of the business. “He didn’t have a lot of personality” in the ring. On the other hand, “what a fuckin’ hoss!” The real question was if he’d pick up the nuances of how to talk, which he picked up in the WWF. He didn’t think Lesnar was ready when he left but was impressed when he saw him working with Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and others. He’s got a big-game player mindset, so he was able to step it up when it counted. He feels that Lesnar is the one wrestler who improved tremendously from when he left OVW to the present day.

 

How receptive was Brock to advice? He was receptive but he didn’t necessarily understand what they were saying or why he was saying it. Brock was a natural heel but he wanted him to start out as a babyface because he wanted the heels to be experienced people capable of calling the match and making sure everything was done right. He put Brock and Sheldon Benjamin together as a team because of their history on the Minnesota wrestling team. Sheldon was a natural wrestler but his look was wrong. Together, Sheldon gave the team the personality it needed and Brock gave the team its perceived credibility. Sheldon’s personality was always great in the locker room but it took a little while for it to come across in the ring.

 

Did Brock seem more driven than any other talented? That’s a hard question because almost all of them bust their asses. The real deciding factors of success will be what they can physically do and how much they understand. “Some people were just born being goddamn mooses and some weren’t.”

 

How did he change from when he stared in OVW to leaving in early 2002? He didn’t change much outside of the ring but stared to learn how to express himself in the ring by the end. Part of the problem was that Lesnar was a farm kid from Iowa who would only work around the farm and wrestle. That kind of limited his frame of reference when Cornette would start trying to describe a spot by using scenes from Roadrunner cartoons. He became more confident in the ring by he left.

 

Did he think he was ready when he left? He knew he was ready physically but thought he couldn’t cut the kind of promos he needed to. The personality wasn’t necessarily projected when he did it. On the other hand, guys like John Cena were naturals on the mic. Some of the guys just needed to be spoon-fed their promos to realize what they were supposed to inflect and why.

 

John Cena- He was always a great talker and athlete, but he wasn’t quite smooth in the ring. He’s great now. Although Cornette detests rap, and especially white rappers (“They should be thrown screaming from helicopters in front of their fuckin’ families”), it works incredibly well and he loves Cena doing it. He thought he’d be sitting there going “Here’s this century’s version of Ric Flair and they’re sitting there wasting him” but Cena pulled off the gimmick and made it great. He tells his guys all the time how overrated the writers are and how you have to be able to make what you’re given work for you and make it better, which is exactly what Cena did.

 

Does he get a lot of talent who are given things on a silver platter (Tough Enough wrestlers) who come in with an attitude? Not really. Matt and John from Tough Enough 3 came in recently and have been great. He doesn’t know about Maven because Les Thatcher had him in Heartland Wrestling Association, but Nidia came into OVW wondering where the limos were just because she didn’t know better. He refuses to watch Tough Enough and makes sure to say “NO WRESTLING STUDENTS IN OVW ARE TAKING TRIPS TO ICELAND!” for the camera. Jackie Gayda and Linda Miles (Shaniqua) from Tough Enough 2 came in knowing that TE was bullshit and really wanted to learn how to wrestle. He puts over Matt and John heavily for the improvements they’ve made. Synn butts in to make sure that Cornette talks about how Nidia busts her ass now that she knows what it’s all about. She came in kind of clueless but worked hard when push came to shove. All of the wrestlers, contract and non-contract, are booked based on how Cornette thinks their abilities will be used best.

 

Doug Basham- He also brings up how Doug Basham was a non-contract guy when he first got to work with him and that it took Basham years to return to the school because he couldn't get his work shift at the Ford factory changed. He also talks about how most of the background of Basham in OVW is a shoot, as Basham is Danny Davis’s nephew, was the first student in OVW, and the best wrestler Davis ever produced. As soon as he ended up on TV, the WWF gave him a contract immediately because of how good he was.

 

Other guys who got WWE contracts after working their asses off in the territory- Nick Dinsmore, Damaja (Danny Basham), Rob Conway, and Johnny Jeter. Jeter packed his car up in San Diego and moved to Kentucky to go to the school. He was in the amateur class at the school until he struck them both as the next Ricky Morton, at which point he got moved to the pro class, ended up on TV, and got a WWE contract. He feels that booking based on merit helps things out because it keeps the contract guys from sitting around jacking off because they know they’ll be used and it keeps the non-contract guys from giving up because they feel they won’t get the opportunity they deserve.

 

Is there a part of him that resents some of the Tough Enough guys getting a free ride? No. To illustrate his viewpoint, he tells one of the crew “Here’s $1000… Would you take it? OF COURSE YOU’D TAKE IT you fuckin’ fool.” The kids were just taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. He DOES have a problem if they expect to be given more instead of earning it. He compares it to the lottery. “What are you going to do with that money, blow it all on booze and hookers? It’d be fun for a while…” He feels no one else on the roster should have a problem with it as long as the person who gets it handles it well.

 

Does he feel that the wrestling business would be better off without Tough Enough? “Oh, God, I fucking despise it!” They’ve had people trying to get into OVW to do TV stories on it but he refuses to agree to it on general principle, which is that you never see TV cameras going into magician schools showing how all the tricks are done.

 

Rick Bassman- He calls him, amongst other things, a leech and “a boil on the ass of wrestling.” Bassman does little in the way of training the guys, gets a cut of whatever the guys that go through his school make for the rest of their career, puts out documentaries exposing the business, etc. “You should be dropped in boiling oil in fucking town square! You’re a fucking piece of shit!” People like him are the ones that are killing the business. If people think everyone can do it, it devalues it. “If you know, then you’ve got a bunch of people on the fuckin’ Internet who don’t get laid, because they wouldn’t be on there otherwise” talking down about the workrate and totally devaluing what the wrestlers did in the ring.

 

Is it too late to get the wonder of the business back? It’s too late for this generation, but people will forget over time. He understands that a lot of the big fans are what pay everyone’s salaries by buying tickets but he hates the people who watch everything and break it down just to find something to complain about.

 

Since the fans think they know too much, does he think that they have any true understanding about what’s going on? No, not even the guys in the ring understand it these days. “I liked the business a lot better when the marks were in the crowd than when they were in the locker room.” He says he’ll sign more autographs in the locker room tomorrow night than he would if he went through the crowd. He tries to teach psychology of the business in OVW because RAW is wall-to-wall spots so someone who knows psychology can change things up enough to get noticed by the fans because they’re doing something different and, if they’re good enough at it, keep their attention as long as they want it. He says that the ability to grab someone’s attention is what separates The Rock, Steve Austin, Mick Foley and The Undertaker from a bunch of people doing spots. He refuses to name names but says that a person without a wrestling background in the WWE once went into his locker room and asked “Who wants to be Kaientai?” and was absolutely SHOCKED to see everyone raise their hands. The reason they did it was because Kaientai had jobs at the time. Cornette says the best question to ask is “Do you want to be a middlecard guy?” because if your goal is to be in the middle, you might as well go sell shoes. If you’re going to do it, aim for the top. “I did it with managing but managing went away… unless I have fake tits, so now I’m into announcing.” If JR retires before him, he’ll get the job by default because “nobody else is any fucking good.” (Amen if you just mean WWE guys. Mike Tenay kicks ass though.) Booking is not an area where you can really excel because it’s all subjective. “People in Germany eat SHIT for Christ’s sake, so it’s all subjective. (I’m not sure if that’s a “Sick German Fetish Video” joke or a “Sunny’s Spaghetti and Shit Balls by Chef Scott Hall” joke. For those who don't know the story, The Clique put shit in Sunny's food at least once on a European tour in the mid-90s as a "rib", and I use the term VERY loosely in this case.)

 

OVW tryout camps- There’s been one of those, which lasted for a week. Everyone wants to be a wrestler and everyone who wants to be a wrestler wants to go to the WWF. They’re always looking for talent so they take open applications and bring in fifty people from all the applications. “It was like a summer camp”, so they had them in the ring, cut promos, etc. and looked for potential. Some people lied on their applications but they had a lot of good prospects show up. While he and Davis could make a ton of money by enrolling everyone, they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves after shitting on the business like that. Twelve of the fifty people invited to the camp were invited to join the OVW program. Some of the things they looked for on the application included an athletic background but no one who applied had one and yet they were already wrestlers. A lot of the guys who got invited out of that group have done well, including Tank Toland. He refuses to name anyone else because he doesn’t want to leave anyone out. There is no limit of how long someone can be in the pro-level course, as they’re there until they move on or quit. There is an amateur class that meets on Saturdays and costs $500. If he and Davis see any potential in an amateur student, they cut a deal with him and move him to the pro-level course.

 

Does he think Tough Enough could have handled thinks similar to the way he explained them, such as giving a general idea of what’s involved rather than specifics which may expose the business? MTV didn’t let him in on the Tough Enough meetings, so he doesn’t know. In the camp, the first three days are basics such as running the ropes and taking a flat-back bump. Synn breaks in at this point to make sure Cornette talks about how he doesn’t take a 20% cut of anyone who comes through OVW. The only thing they ask is that if someone they train becomes a star, they would like it if they came back some time and did them a favor by working one of their shows. Despite the claims that “he teaches basics because he’s old-school” he counters that he teaches basics so that the guys don’t kill each other by accident. He says that nobody knows how to do a takeover anymore without almost killing their opponent. He makes a big point that moves won’t sell any tickets but personalities do, such as The Rock and Steve Austin. He doesn’t want boring wrestling, he wants safe and logical wrestling.

 

Does he think that fans can be retrained? They don’t have to be as long as they believe in the guys they’re watching. If there are two strong personalities, people will buy tickets to see them compete. He says that “smart fans” only talk about Mick Foley’s bumps while the average person will talk about how crazy he seems and his facial expressions, which are what actually got him over. Foley got over to the point where people wouldn’t cheer the bumps as loud because they really cared about him and didn’t want to see him get hurt, which Cornette insists is the sign that someone’s REALLY getting over. Foley thought he was short-changing people by being Dude Love, but Cornette would always tell him that he was getting over and prolonging his career.

 

Ian Rotten and IWA- “Talk about another guy who needs to be dropped out of a fucking helicopter screaming. This fuckin’ fat motherfucker” had killed wrestling in Louisville until OVW revived it by doing over-the-top hardcore shit. What set everything off recently was that the Louisville Eccentric Observer did a story on Rotten’s “wrestling” promotion, so Cornette sent in an editorial talking about how he’s had a bunch of experience in wrestling and that he doesn’t want people to call Rotten’s crap wrestling. He also makes sure to distance OVW from IWA because OVW does business with Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, large radio stations, and so forth and IWA is always a PR nightmare for OVW. 1-Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling, who’s into the same shit as Ian Rotten, picked up the story and ran with it. Cornette makes a point about how if he knocks someone in this interview, it’ll be instant news but, if he praises someone, nobody will ever hear of it. (Touche, Jim, although I tend to call these shoots down the middle as much as I can, unless the interviewee is a true douche like the Iron Sheik, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, or Paul Orndorff.) He iterates that the LEO is a small publication handed out for free in Louisville but that his letter has set off all kinds of crap on the Internet. It just snowballed from there. He wonders aloud if he’s the only person in existence who thinks that doing stuff like stapling leeches to your skin or your tongue to a turnbuckle “makes you a goddamn idiot”. It’s stupid to do it if you get paid $100,000 a year and even stupider if you don’t get paid.

 

What does he think of the hardcore fans of garbage promotions? God bless them. He considers it stupid when people do stuff like bungee jump or skydive, let alone when someone jumps off a balcony. “You know what a skydiving accident is? When the skydiver LIVES! You’re jumping out of an airplane with a goddamn sheet wrapped around you.” He remembers the days when it was a heel vs. a babyface in a hard-fought bloodbath “but not gigging your goddamn scrotum!” At the end of it, the fans were drained and the guys were able to take a shower and do the same thing the next night. These days, people are doing shit that it takes weeks to recover from and they aren’t making any money at it either. It used to make him nervous whenever Mick Foley did that stuff and it made a lot of other people nervous too. Wrestling is supposed to be simulated combat but, now that it’s all exposed, it’s about making people believe in you and, if you can’t pull it off, it becomes a display in tastelessness like geeks biting heads off chickens at the county fair. (“I know you’ve seen Siamese twins… I know you’ve seen geeks bite heads off chickens… but not since the fall of the Mung dynasty have you seen Siamese twin geeks bite heads off chickens!”) If you like it’s that’s your business but just don’t call it wrestling.

 

Ed Ferrara- “Goddamn inconsiderate weasel.” Cornette went down to do commentary with Scott Hudson on a show in Tennessee. Because NWA TNA was starting up in that general vicinity, Cornette was asked if he had any problems with the TNA crew coming in to get some experience during the show. He didn’t have any problems with it in theory because the guy in question was mainly dealing with TNA and not the show Cornette was appearing on. The guy then explained that the TNA crew would be in the back practicing and, when Cornette asked him why he was telling him this, the guy told him one of the announcers was Ed Ferrara. Once Cornette heard that, he said “I’m going to have to punch him in the goddamn eye.” Cornette agreed not to beat Ferrara when asked. He said that he wouldn’t tell Ferrara what he thought of him, which was a long time coming because Ferrara “was sucking Vince Russo’s cock all those years” (figuratively… I hope), he screwed Vince McMahon over by leaving the WWF without notice, and he did the Oklahoma character that completely made fun of Cornette’s good friend Jim Ross. When Cornette was backstage at the show, he was just hanging out until Ferrara showed up. Cornette says that Ferrara had dreadlocks and looked like “a white Bob Marley with a giant sand ass”, like one of those punch-dolls they sell for kids. “And if I can talk about a big ass, it’s big.”

 

He says that the last time he saw Ferrara was when they were writing in Connecticut, but then corrects himself to say that Ferrara was carrying Vince Russo’s papers, Russo was attempting to write, and Cornette himself was “attempting not to cut my goddamn throat” by having to put up with them. Ferrara came up to Cornette, so Cornette felt obliged to tell Ferrara off for several things, including making fun of Jim Ross for having Bells Palsy. He goes into a rant I can’t even transcribe talking about how Jim Ross, the best announcer next to maybe Gordon Solie himself, is a workaholic who’s given 30 years to the business while Ferrara’s a dumbass who wrote Duckman before joining the WWF team and went on national television to make fun of JR’s disease that almost cost him his career. “He’s the most disreputable, miserable, fuckin’ piece of shit human being to ever breathe air, in my opinion.” He then told off Ferrara, ending with “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you in the ass.” Cornette topped it off by spitting in Ferrara’s eye and challenging him to a rumble in the parking lot if he had the balls. Cornette doesn’t know if he could have won but certainly would have given it a try. “If you took Ed Ferrara’s fucking nuts and threw them into a straw, it would look like a kernel of corn rolling into a storm drain.” Instead of fighting him, Ferrara went off “to play with whoever’s dick he was playing with that night” and didn’t see him again the rest of the night. It was all under the old rule he has that if someone fucks with a friend of his, he’ll fuck with them.

 

There’s more than this but I can’t really do it justice.

 

Cornette starts repeating the story about the message he left on Vince Russo’s answering machine in early 2000. He mentions that part of the reason he disliked Russo so much was that some of his guys that were really talented got screwed over by him, although he doesn’t name names. (I’m guessing that The Headbangers are two of them and that Owen Hart is probably another) The full version of this is included in the first Cornette review which is elsewhere on the site.

 

Examples of talent who got screwed over by Russo- “Anybody who worked for the WWF while he was there that had a Southern accent.” Dan Severn was another. While he respects the Blue Meanie, he had a problem with Russo wanting to push him just because he was fat, painted blue, and would wear a dress. Dan Severn, on the other hand, couldn’t get a break besides being a tremendously decorated Ultimate Fighting Champion and amateur wrestler because he had no personality. However, it’s a part of the wrestling business to cover up someone’s weaknesses and accentuate their strengths. He wouldn’t use anyone who spoke with a Southern accent. He tried to get JR off of TV for “some newscaster with pretty hair” and turned JR heel, which bombed quickly. He also remembers Beaver Cleavage (Headbanger Mosh) in particular as an example of a bullshit gimmick he gave to people in the WWF. “He put a goddamn BILLIONARE out of business in Atlanta” and now he’s screwing up NWA TNA. One of the things that he enjoys is that Vince Russo lives in Atlanta now, surrounded by people with Southern accents 24/7, which must be like the Seventh Level of Hell for him. Once he went to WCW, he got completely exposed for what he was and things aren’t looking much better for him in TNA either.

 

Is there any one thing that Russo did that he thinks is good? He’s not sure because he’s wondering why his father didn’t use birth control. If he did something right, he feels it’s because a blind squirrel will find a nut occasionally.

 

People who want to expose the business- They’re typically writers who do it so they can be congratulated for it. Whenever Cornette booked a territory, he didn’t want anyone in the public to know he was booking it. Russo wanted credit for everything he did, while Cornette was anonymous when he booked Smokey Mountain Wrestling. These days, he’s officially the matchmaker for OVW, which is a plot device that lets him determine who will wrestle who and when. He says that it kills the effect if you know that Steve Austin was told what to say or do and it’s the same effect of being told that John Wayne or Bruce Willis is just an actor while you’re trying to enjoy a movie. Cornette feels that the best compliment a writer can get is to be completely anonymous and have the talent get over because the money starts rolling in. (I’ll agree to this… that’s partially why no one can remember the name Chris Kreski, the head writer before Stephanie McMahon, who had a GREAT run as the head writer before Stephanie took over around Survivor Series 2000. He quit because he was tired of the full-time job it was to keep things working correctly.) He’s figured out that he’d rather be anonymous these days because it means it can do simple things like go to the store without being bothered. Cornette compares wrestling styles to chess, as there’s an infinite number of ways a game can play out but only three finishes… black winning (heel wins), white winning (face wins), or stalemate (no winner). He doesn’t want to script out everything but he likes to give than an idea of what to do then let them create the rest. In the case of Damaja and Machine, he told them that they could do 20 minutes for the Loser Leaves Town match and the only requirement was that Damaja had to win. The fans were up for it the whole way through, even the locker room was up for it. He says it was like the old days when they’d tell a story and sell out a whole coliseum. The only reason to overbook or overwrite is to protect bad talent, but it’s a lot easier for good talent to save bad writing or booking than for good writing or booking to save bad talent.

 

Brian Gerwitz and Dave Lagana- He doesn’t remember Gerwitz but does remember meeting Lagana. He knows they don’t have a wrestling background and that they weren’t there when he was there. He also knows that everything is done by committee, and then it’s sent to Vince McMahon for approval. It’s been his experience that the more people involved in the process will make things worse because of all the different visions trying to steer the product. He can’t say for sure what’s wrong with the product, though, and it’s not because Vince McMahon pays him. The one thing he can say is that it’s hard for anyone who hasn’t performed to be a booker because it isn’t like writing for a character, as Steve Austin on TV is a lot like Steve Austin at home.

 

The miscarriage story- This is another story from the last shoot, as Terri Runnels had a “miscarriage” on the air in 1999 and Cornette called Ed Ferrara out for doing such an outlandish bullshit angle. Ferrara tried to defend it by saying “They’d do it on Dallas” but Cornette tried to make him understand that the fans know it’s a work but they still want to believe the characters really are the people and that angles like that only make them uneasy and never make any money.

 

Drawing money- He’s way past believing he’s a draw because he’s been off TV forever and male managers are done as far as the business is concerned. He doesn’t put himself in angles anymore because he doesn’t think he can draw tickets, so he puts the young guys in those positions. If you don’t put the young guys in that position, some day there won’t be anyone to take over when “the old horse drops dead.”

 

People who stick around too long- He has no problems with people staying in the business too long as long as it’s just a bit part. What DOES piss him off are people who have been around WAY too long, have nothing left to give to the business, and are making way too much money to justify even being employed anymore. (He doesn’t name names, but I think this is a Kevin Nash rant.)

 

His first conversation with Jim Ross after the Ferrara incident- He says that JR is like his adopted father, as he’ll call him up and tell him “Corny, you shouldn’t be doing stuff like that.” JR’s only comment really was “try not to get in trouble.”

 

Biggest mistakes he sees indy wrestlers make now- It’s hard to call them mistakes because they’re not taught better. It’s only a mistake if you know better and you do it anyway. His big deal is tag matches and he wants to show them how to properly build to a hot tag, which involves a face being beaten to an inch of his life until FINALLY, after several attempts, he tags his partner in who completely destroys the heels. (See any Rock and Roll Express match for Ricky Morton as an example of the seller and Robert Gibson as the hot tag guy.) Another thing is that you have to teach an over team how to elevate a not-as-over team to their level or how to face an un-over team that won’t be elevated and keep it interesting for 10 minutes.

 

Another thing is to work the stipulations, such as the babyface team starting off with a low blow or a chairshot in a no-DQ match and having a bit where the heels bitch to the referee about it but he says “It’s a no-DQ match.” (Ronnie Garvin and Greg Valentine did this in their submission match at Royal Rumble 1990… They started going for pins in the first few minutes of the match and it took the referee telling them several times that it was a submission match before they started going for submission moves.)

 

If it’s a 2 of 3 falls match, you have to do something like a 23 second first fall where the babyfaces win miraculously. The second fall takes longer but the heels win and beat the living piss out of the guy they pinned. The third fall is a long hot-tag situation where the babyfaces pull it out for the win. He got the guys to do the quick first fall one night by telling them “I’m going to be at that desk. If it doesn’t work, come beat the piss out of me.” Sure enough, it worked. In order to build heat for the third fall, there should be an over-the-top bump or something similar taken by the face-in-peril, they should be immediately pinned by the heel but kick out, but still be down long enough for the heels to continue kicking the shit out of him.

 

Heels going over- When the Midnight Express were going over the Rock and Roll Express, they’d have Ricky Morton take two or three of their finishers and kick out but, on the third one, the finisher would miss and Morton would make an unexpected tag, which Cornette says is the definition of a hot tag right there… a tag that the fans want to see but aren’t expecting to see.

 

Another problem is that everyone expects the match to be a series of peaks that keep climbing, while the proper way to do a match is to have a set of peaks and valleys but have the peaks get higher each time. If the people are seeing a good match, they’ll get lost in the story and sit there to see long matches such as a 45 minute match.

 

Crowd heat- Cornette doesn’t care what they do when he comes out but, if they’re on their feet by the end of the match, he’s done his job.

 

What advice would he give to a wrestler wanting an WWE contract? Come to OVW. Look like an athlete, be in shape, learn your craft, learn how to tell a story, work on facial expressions, work on showing emotion. They want people who can sell tickets, not people who fit an image. For body language, he uses Jerry Lawler as an example because someone could be in the top of the Memphis coliseum looking at him from behind but be able to figure out what was on his face just from his posture. “You can train a chimpanzee to do a moonsault” but you can’t train it to emote why it’s doing that moonsault to the orangutan. You can make a monster but his shelf life is short. Someone like Arn Anderson or Ric Flair can work forever. He makes a big point about how most of the best people out there, from Ric Flair, to Rock and Austin, to Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle, are themselves turned up a notch for TV instead of a gimmick.

 

What does he look for to spot potential in a talent- Smoothness, moving around the ring, learning every day even if it’s a few things, listening to the people and doing what they want, if it’s a heel they need to know when to feed a babyface and take bumps etc. It’d not definable but you can see it if you’ve seen it enough over time. It’s pretty much the ability to go out in front of a crowd that’s never seen you before and get over by the end of the match. He talks about how he’ll use people on house shows to get a feel for what the fans like. If they get a great reaction, he’ll start putting them on TV. If the crowd dies, they need to work at it.

 

Is one of the problems in the wrestling business that there aren’t people teaching what they should? Yes, because a lot of the people out there training wrestlers are people who never made it. It would be like him, with his limited knowledge of cars, trying to run a car repair school until people figured out he was a fraud and got rid of him. There are a few people out there run by people who made it but are on hard times and are looking for a quick buck. (Buzz Sawyer actually did this to The Undertaker when he first started out, which is why Taker nearly beat the living shit out of Sawyer in WCW until he was reminded that Sawyer was in tight with booker Ole Anderson and could get him fired.) Things to look out for are people who never made it in the business that claim they can make you the WWE champion, people who want a percentage of your money, they claim they’ve trained a bunch of people but can’t substantiate it, etc.

 

Who does he think should be teaching the proper way to wrestle? Jerry Lawler has the ability to do it but not the patience. Dick Murdoch would have been a lousy teacher because he had no patience even though he was an incredible worker.

 

Trainers in OVW- Danny Davis was a good a talent as he’s ever managed, including Bobby Eaton, who headlined all over the South but didn’t get a run in the WWF or the Carolinas. Rip Rogers worked everywhere but was never really successful, yet is a good trainer because he’s patient enough to deal with people trying to learn. Cornette tries to teach timing, talking, etc.

 

Does everyone in OVW have to read Hooker by Lou Thesz? Yes, baseball players need to know who Babe Ruth is and basketball players need to know who Wilt Chamberlain is, so why not make the guys know who Lou Thesz is? They give them Lou Thesz’s book, Tributes by Dave Meltzer, memos written by Cornette over the years, the Bill Watts shoot interview tape, training tapes with guys like the Rock and Roll Express, Ricky Steamboat, and Ric Flair, along with study notes to look for in each match as to what someone did to get over and why, etc. He doesn’t expect them to do a 60 minute broadway after watching Dory Funk Jr. vs. Jack Brisco but he does expect them to pick up what they’re doing and why in order to do a 30 second headlock spot instead of the 5 minutes Funk and Brisco took.

 

Angles he makes them watch and why- He suggests stuff but doesn’t run it into the ground. He also believes there’s no “old-school” or “new school”, but good wrestling and bad wrestling. If it worked back then, it would work today. If it sucked then, it sucks now.

 

The WWE writers coming down to OVW for a few days- They barely talked to him, although he’s not sure if they were afraid of him or what. They were mainly there to get ideas.

 

His reaction to events since the last interview

 

The WWF purchase of WCW- “What else were they going to do with it, have a yard sale?” They’d devalued the company to the point where no one else would want it. While people say the WWF blew the Invasion angle, he puts the blame squarely on WCW and their guaranteed contracts, which allowed guys to sit at home and get paid for doing nothing even if the company was defunct. It was a no-brainer for the talent because Vince couldn’t really pay them enough to make it worth their while to work instead of sitting around playing pocket pool and getting a check every week. “For the price Vince paid for the fuckin’ thing, if he never made a dime he’d have still made a goddamn profit” if only because of the tape library and all the talent that’s been brought in.

 

ECW going out of business- He’s reminded of something Ole Anderson said once said to him… “Cornette, I used to think you were a dumbfuck, but so many dumbfucks have come down the line since then that you’ve moved up without doing anything.” ECW is nothing compared to some of the other places out there. He was friends with a lot of people that worked there, although he dislikes Paul Heyman for several reasons including the encouragement of talent to take higher risks for low payoffs and raise the bar for everyone else. Now that he’s seen “XPW, UPW, Fuck-You-W…”, ECW is better.

 

Did he get nervous when the WWE was the only game left in town? Not really, because every end is the start of a new beginning. Since Vince isn’t going anywhere because of all the money he has and there isn’t anyone to get new talent from, there’s a higher chance of starting a regional system in order to produce new talent for the WWE. With only one big player in the game, it’s a lot easier to change the style that people are accustomed to and lengthen the career of the wrestlers.

 

The Invasion Angle- He doesn’t remember much about it.

 

The Katie Vick angle- “Pass. How’s that for short answers? If I start, I’ll never finish and if I even get halfway through, I’ll probably be jobless.”

 

Jim Ross getting set on fire- “You’re killing me here.”

 

The Al Wilson stuff- “You’re killing me here.”

 

The one thing he will say is that, if he was going to set someone on fire, it would be a person involved in a Pay Per View main event the next month and not JR.

 

What does he think of Paul Heyman’s work on Smackdown- He thinks Paul’s a good commentator and manager but he doesn’t know what he wrote because the show is a committee work and he wasn’t in the room when the show was written. He does like Smackdown much better than RAW though.

 

Does he miss managing and being in front of the crowd? He used to but, when he worked a few matches last year, he was completely blown up for a long time afterwards when he was doing spots that he used to do every night. His career was cut short by managers being phased out of the business but he wouldn’t have lasted much longer because his back, knees, neck, voice, and everything else are giving out on him. He can do it occasionally but can’t do it every night anymore. If the WWE came up to him and offered to bring him back as a manager, he’d do it for a little while if they paid him enough but he wants to stay in Louisville as much as possible.

 

What if the WWF wanted to put him on the writing team- “What if they came up to me and said ‘You could have Pamela Anderson for a week and a half?’ Anything can happen.” He doesn’t play well with others and the last time he was on a team, it was with Russo and it nearly drove him insane. He likes being able to concentrate on OVW and do it all himself yet still have a life outside wrestling.

 

What advice would he give someone who wants to start a promotion? “Don’t.” He goes over the normal things that they shouldn’t do, such as thinking they’re going to get pay per view or sign talent to contracts. They need to be very careful with their money. In Smokey Mountain, they had enough trouble paying for the TV time to be in all the markets they needed. In OVW, they own their own TV production equipment and the building where they tape their shows. All of their talent is either going to the OVW school or is on loan from the WWE.

 

Could the territory system come back like it was in the 80s? They were doing it in Smokey Mountain and it could have worked if the wresting business hadn’t been total crap at the time. The problem is that you have to invest a lot of money and work into it and be in an area with low expenses. Most of the people who have the money are fucking idiots, like John Collins of MECW and Panda Energy of NWA TNA.

 

Who of the WWE guys have been the best at helping out with the young guys? He’s going to try and limit the names as not to leave anyone out, but Chris Jericho helped out a lot with Johnny Jeter, Chris Benoit has helped out with Nick Dinsmore, etc. Other guys that came in include Scotty 2 Hotty, Big Bossman, Kane, Undertaker, Steve Austin, etc. have all done a lot with guys like Rico Constantino who were in OVW. They all look at it as helping build future opponents in the WWE. There are a few people who he hasn’t asked for and won’t name that he won’t ask for because he thinks they may stir shit, but that hasn’t been a problem.

 

Does he watch wrestling today? No, because it tends to be shit these days, although he tells Ring of Honor not to change a thing because it’s doing what its audience wants.

 

Why did he want to work for Ring of Honor? “Rob called me up and told me he’d pay a lot of money for me to tell these bullshit stories…” In short, Rob wanted him to do another interview and Cornette agreed, as long as he didn’t have to go to Philadelphia. When Rob mentioned he was doing a show in Ohio, Cornette decided to do the show and the interview since Rob was going to be in the area.

 

What happened when Bobby Eaton was a trainer in the territory? There were too many people under contract at that time and, in addition to that, Bobby was a great performer but couldn’t communicate what to do well enough for the trainees to pick up on it. It just didn’t work out, which makes him sad.

 

Why was he negative about Spanky when the WWE signed him? He likes him but he’s 150 pounds, pale white, and wore a Dr. Seuss hat to the ring. If one of his amateur guys had tried to do the same thing, he’d be pissed. When the OVW fans saw him, they laughed at him and not in a good way. For another reason, the name “Spanky” doesn’t pass the name test of “Can a person with this name be taken seriously as WWE title contender? Tonight, in this very ring, there will be a WWE Title Match between The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Triple H... and Spanky?!?” He thought Spanky wasn’t being serious about his profession. He thinks he’s a nice kid but wouldn’t use him in OVW again as long as he had that name and wore baggy pants and the Dr. Seuss hat.

 

Does the WWE put enough money into the developmental system? “No, they need a LOT more… made out to the name of Jim Cornette.” Seriously, though, it would be smart for them to bankroll developmental territories in order for them to find and produce new stars considering what just one of those stars could mean to the bottom line on a pay per view. He also thinks they’re getting more patient now considering that The Rock and Kurt Angle, two of the biggest prodigies in the business, still took about two years each before they really got what it took to be a star. (Kurt Angle spent at least a year doing dark matches for the WWF before his debut at Survivor Series 1999, so that’s why I don’t say he was a star in one year) He compares it to college, which takes four years to complete. Everything builds over time and it takes quite a while before you can learn all of it. It also scares him a bit that the main event of Wrestlemania was Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle because they had seven years of experience between them. It used to be that one headliner would have fifteen years of experience on his own.

 

Does the WWE rush guys to the main roster? He thinks they’ll take people before they’re ready for various reasons. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. He wants to leave guys in training until they’ve had the kind of experience that the older OVW guys have had, such as ten years in the case of Doug Basham and five years in the case of some others.

 

Who has been rushed recently? He’ll start knocking people if he answers that, but he feels that Lance Cade got a rushed debut. He also feels that they rushed Randy Orton because he made the main roster when he was 21, although he has stepped it up since making the main roster. Rene Dupree also got rushed, but that was because he was French-Canadian and they needed a French heel on TV. Sylvain Grenier is someone he’ll readily knock because he’s riding on Dupree’s coattails. (Although I’ve quit watching RAW, most people who still watch have noticed a marked improvement in La Resistance ever since Rob Conway took the spot of the injured Grenier) “He’s the shits” but he’s only 19.

 

Who should be on the main roster but isn’t? Rob Conway, Nick Dinsmore, and Nova from OVW are all ready, but the rest are really green at the moment.

 

Are there any requests the WWE has turned down? “Well, there was that hot tub in my living room…” They’re realistic in what they ask for, so they’ve never had to get turned down. They also take stuff on a loan or on a payment schedule. The biggest asset they get is talent, either developmental guys paid by the WWE or main roster talent who work shows for them.

 

What’s the biggest mistake the WWE makes regarding the developmental system? He feels that it’s the writers not checking with him before calling guys up as he likes to book a month in advance. If he doesn’t know where they’re going to go with someone, he won’t book them yet. In Smokey Mountain, he booked the Gangstas nine months in advance, from start to finish, and followed it to a T although Mustafa and New Jack bailed on him to go to ECW right before they finished. He got IMMENSELY pissed when no one was listening when he talked up Damaja and Doug Basham as a team and then, when he finally started them feuding with each other on OVW TV, the writers decided on a whim to team them on Smackdown. He looks at that kind of stuff as a booking quiz, as he has to take what the WWE has given him and make logical sense of it. (His answer to the Damaja/Basham situation was to say that Johnny Ace had told Damaja to pretend to be Danny Basham on WWE TV or his contract would be null and void.)

 

Does he ever ask the WWE to call guys up to finish and angle? He doesn’t tell them who to call up and, since the WWE doesn’t work on Wednesdays, the guys will be available to finish up an angle on OVW TV. He just asks that they give him a reasonable amount of time to be playing double duty with OVW and either RAW or Smackdown, which is what Damaja and Basham are doing now.

 

How much does he have to do with who gets a developmental contract? The final decision is theirs, so sometimes his opinion carries more weight than others.

 

Christmas Chaos 2000- “The show so nice we had to promote it twice.” They promoted the show for weeks as having Stone Cold Steve Austin making an appearance and Chris Benoit wrestling Nick Dinsmore, then a blizzard grounded the WWF crew in Little Rock, Arkansas, and cancelled the show. They ended up holding it in the middle of January 2001. They’d sold out the Louisville Garden in advance, which was a big deal for Cornette since he’s from Louisville, so it was depressing when he had to cancel it the first time around.

 

Some of the most fun he’s had have been the TV tapings, such as the whole angle with Damaja and Doug Basham.

 

Favorite angles he’s booked in OVW- The whole angle surrounding The Revolution was right up there, as Damaja and Doug Basham go way back and there was a LOT of shoot history involved in the angle. The realism behind it was part of why it was so easy for the long-time OVW fans to buy the angle. Cornette feels that the best angles ever are ones that are as close to shoots as possible because people believe it. The group was also good at elevating talent, as Damaja was initially brought into the group to tag with Basham because Damaja was getting overshadowed by Nick Dinsmore. Once Damaja started getting over as a singles babyface, he was replaced in the group by Rob Conway, who then began tagging with Basham against Dinsmore and Damaja. It also helped that Dinsmore would act wary of Damaja despite Damaja’s babyface turn because of all that Damaja had done to Dinsmore in the past, as Cornette HATES it when years of feuding between two guys is thrown out the window because one of them has made a turn.

 

The recent Damaja and Basham Loser Leaves Town match- Another thing that added to the realism on OVW TV was that everyone knew that both Damaja and Basham were going to be on Smackdown, so they couldn’t pick an obvious winner going into their Loser Leaves Town match. After Damaja won, they even got Basham to turn face on his way out of OVW by talking up how he’d lost to a better man, then getting into a fight with Conway and the rest of Revolution because Basham wanted to dissolved the group against their wishes. At the end of everything that night, they had Danny Davis come out and make up with Basham, thus ending the feud between them that had been constantly waged in OVW from the middle of 2001 to the present.

 

(The angle surrounded Basham, who is Danny Davis’s nephew, coming back to OVW after a long absence and trying to take over the company from Davis because of promises Davis had broken to him about being the top star and owning the company some day. Because of some of Davis’s broken promises, Doug had to start working at the Ford plant to support himself, which removed him from the company because of he shifts he had to work. While he was out of the company, guys who’d been there at the same time as him such as Nick Dinsmore, Rob Conway, and Damaja got to step up and become the big stars. That’s why The Revolution initially targeted Conway and put a bounty out on his head.)

 

Fun fact- Victoria was a long-time member of The Revolution until she finally left for RAW in late 2002.

 

What angles didn’t go the way they wanted? He tries to put them out of his mind, but he’ll try to think of some. One of those was a Coal Miner’s Glove match in which a guy was supposed to make a run-in and get the glove off of the pole… but couldn’t quite make it up the pole. He made several attempts at it, with the final one ending in him taking a chest-first bump on the ring post and then dragging his sorry carcass back to the locker room. It looked horrible since they were unable to edit it out of the match (They were taping on Super VHS back then, which doesn’t edit well). After the match, Cornette took a chair from Danny Davis’s office, went outside, and reared back to start beating the ground when he noticed that the guy was laid out on the ground outside the building. Cornette started hearing police sirens in the back of his mind, so he threw the chair aside and started checking on the guy, who turned out to be all right but quit the company shortly thereafter.

 

People going blank on interviews- Kenny Bolin is a great interview but what he does when he blanks out is even funnier than what he does when he has a clue. A few weeks ago, he made a random comment during an interview which made Cornette break out laughing, which was “Jimmy, you’re looking at me like I’ve got a smoking turd coming out of my mouth.” Synn blanked out once when she was doing color commentary and the only words that came to mind were “shit” and “goddamn”, so they bleeped it all out and it sounded like she had Tourette’s Syndrome. (Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live song lyric… “And the only words I understand / are “God” and “Damn and “Christmas”) Cornette’s tactic to save people who have an obvious deer-in-the-headlights look on their face is to say “So, what you’re saying is…” and then get out the point of their interview, which they agree to and it ends up sounding like they actually said it.

 

Reactions to Dave Meltzer’s comments about the Louisville Gardens shows, which were effectively that the WWF talent would bring people in and help put over the OVW guys as draws in Louisville but that it didn’t necessarily happen all the time- It’s a valid point because that’s what they tried to do and it worked to some extent, but the vast majority of the 5000 people in attendance were thinking “This is the only chance we’ll get to see Stone Cold Steve Austin this year.” It did help the company overall because they can then go to radio stations and Six Flags talking about how they put on an event that had 5000 people in the Louisville Gardens. He always has the WWF guys wrestle the OVW guys or partner up with the WWF guys but, for the most part, he keeps things realistic and has the WWF guys win. He brings up the example of having Jericho beat Johnny Jeter and Kurt Angle beat Damaja in the past year. He just wants to put his guys out there toe to toe with a top WWF guy for 15 minutes or so before the WWF guy wins, which is the result people are expecting but gives some credibility to the OVW guy.

 

More names that went through OVW-

 

Sheldon Benjamin- Great all the way around. Great guy, hilarious in the back. Cornette’s color commentator in OVW, Dean Hill, immediately pegged Benjamin as “a puppy with big paws”, which is a way of saying “he’s going to be big but I’m not sure how big.” Besides Doug Basham, he’s probably the most natural talent that’s ever been through OVW.

 

Nathan Jones- He only met him a week ago. “He ain’t exactly fuckin’ Karl Gotch, I’ll tell you that.”

 

Mark Henry- He loves Mark Henry to death. Henry has improved tremendously since he started in OVW. What he finds funny and sad is that Henry was sent to OVW to lose weight, did lose the weight (down to 320 pounds) and was doing leapfrogs and monkey flips, then the WWF had him enter a strong-man tournament which made him bulk up again, then he has to slim down again to get back in the ring. Sometimes you have to challenge Mark to keep him motivated and he’s got to learn timing, but he was great at that weight he’d gotten down to and his promos have improved. He’s a good person.

 

Randy Orton- Another puppy with big paws. He came in at 18 and changed his look completely by living in the gym and getting muscular and shredded. His promos have increased dramatically since then. You could tell he was a natural because he has the size, the look, the attitude, etc. He did do some stupid stuff while he was in OVW, but you’d expect that considering he was so young. He’s grown up since then.

 

Batista (Leviathan)- Pretty much, Cornette saw him as a demon early and positioned him as such, which got him over even though Batista didn’t quite know what he was doing. The problem, though, is that “you don’t put the Frankenstein’s Monster in the sunlight, you keep him in the shadows and keep feeding him villagers.” He feels the Leviathan gimmick was perfect for him but the WWE didn’t want him to look like Goldberg and made him grow hair, which made him seem more normal. He wasn’t introduced properly and didn’t know enough to get himself over at the time. He can draw big money down the road but he needs to be pushed as a monster and be protected. If they make him take armdrags and act like a normal wrestler, he won’t make any money for the company.

 

Rico Constantino- “The most joy to have around of any human being I’ve ever met.” He used to tell people that if Rico broke down in the Sahara 50 miles from a show, he’d build a car out of sand and still make it there on time. When Cornette first went to OVW, Rico was one of his early picks to get a developmental deal. Great guy. Natural worker.

 

Linda Miles- She was a great athlete but couldn’t really pull it off in the ring. She also was questioning whether she wanted to stay in the business, but she’s over that now. Wrestling isn’t coming naturally to her, so it’s a struggle.

 

Victoria- “A gem.” Great athlete and looks the part. Very nice. He gets nervous whenever he sees her on TV because her knee’s obviously messed up and he’s had a thing about knees ever since he blew his out at Starrcade 86. As long as the knee’s fine, she’ll be on top for a while.

 

 

Guys who didn’t make it-

 

Ron “H20” Waterman- If he’d had any input into the decision-making process, Waterman would still be around. Wrestling didn’t come natural to him, but he was a big tough guy and very nice. He just didn’t show enough personality quick enough, he guesses, but he wishes he was still in the program.

 

Eric Angle- Not a natural pro wrestler, much like Kurt Angle himself at first. However, Eric never had everything dawn on him one day like it did for Kurt. He looks as if he’s uncomfortable in the ring and looks the part.

 

Russ McCullough- He likes him as a person but “he’s a big seven-foot fucking pussy.” Not very determined, expected to have thing handed to him. Wasn’t putting enough effort into things.

 

David Flair- He likes him a lot and respects his father, but he thinks David felt too much pressure. The first thing he made David do when he came to OVW was to lose the blonde hair and any of his father’s trademark moves because the fans would shit all over him if he didn’t. He always seemed to be thinking “I’m never going to be as good as my father” instead of making his own name by stepping up.

 

 

Other talent in the WWE-

 

Chris Nowinski- Not a natural worker but a great promo guy and comes off as a natural heel due to his personality an