This remarkable edition of the Guest Booker series was voted one of the best DVDs of 2009 in the Wrestling Observer when released on DVD, and now for the first time you can get it On Demand!
What could have been remembered as pro wrestling’s most compelling storyline, has come to be known as the sport’s biggest blown opportunity. The WCW Invasion angle fell short of expectations and the wrestling world watched WWE swallow WCW without fanfare.
Jim Cornette has a thing or twenty to say about that! One of wrestling’s most outspoken and creative minds attacks this edition of Guest Booker with unmatched vigor in this nearly 3 hour show. Watch Jim turn the tepid Invasion into a flaming hot angle as he books in remarkable detail with extensive explanation for each move.
What could have been remembered as pro wrestling’s most compelling storyline, has come to be known as the sport’s biggest blown opportunity. The WCW Invasion angle fell short of expectations and the wrestling world watched WWE swallow WCW without fanfare.
Jim Cornette has a thing or twenty to say about that! One of wrestling’s most outspoken and creative minds attacks this edition of Guest Booker with unmatched vigor in this nearly 3 hour show. Watch Jim turn the tepid Invasion into a flaming hot angle as he books in remarkable detail with extensive explanation for each move.
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00In 2001, the wrestling world was stunned when the Monday Night Wars came to an abrupt end
00:00:14and Vince McMahon purchased World Championship Wrestling.
00:00:18Wrestling wars that began in the 80s were over, and there was only one company left.
00:00:24If there was any good that could come from this monopoly, it was that we'd finally get
00:00:28to see what we'd waited for for all these years, WWF versus WCW.
00:00:33It should have been the biggest wrestling storyline ever in the business.
00:00:38I can't miss promotion that would have kept business strong for years to come.
00:00:43All those what-ifs would finally be answered.
00:00:45All those dream matches would finally happen.
00:00:50No they wouldn't.
00:00:51Instead of being remembered for years as one of the greatest events in wrestling, the WCW
00:00:56Invasion is remembered for being one of the greatest wasted opportunities of all time.
00:01:01Today we sit with our guest booker Jim Cornette, one of the most respected minds in professional
00:01:06wrestling.
00:01:07We will go over what went wrong with the angle in the first place, and then we'll rewrite
00:01:13history and have Jim rebook the Invasion angle.
00:01:16Will it be better than what actually happened?
00:01:18How could it not be?
00:01:21Let's find out now as we present guest booker Jim Cornette rebooking the WCW Invasion.
00:01:37In talking about the WCW Invasion and all the things that went wrong and could have
00:01:41been done differently and salvaged, potentially one of the biggest blown opportunities in
00:01:46the world of wrestling, we thought we'd get somebody who we'd have to pry that information
00:01:52out of and really just kind of coax to express how he feels about that and what he would
00:01:57have done differently.
00:01:58So we called this guy and he reluctantly agreed to come up here, hoping that he'd have some
00:02:03kind of opinion on booking.
00:02:04I don't really.
00:02:05We'll see what happens.
00:02:06I just got to go with the flow.
00:02:07We'll talk a little bit and if you want to expand, you expand.
00:02:12We'll be here tomorrow.
00:02:15Jim Cornette, everybody knows that.
00:02:19Let's start with booking.
00:02:20The series is intended to chronicle the minds of all the living bookers while they're with
00:02:26us.
00:02:27Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
00:02:31So I want to get inside your head a little bit with booking philosophy.
00:02:35When do you think you became a seasoned booker?
00:02:40What had to happen?
00:02:41What did you have to live through?
00:02:42What did you have to do?
00:02:43I became a seasoned booker next month.
00:02:46You'd never become a seasoned booker.
00:02:49You become an experienced booker, but there's always ... I always tell people that in the
00:02:55transition which we'll talk about from wrestling booking to wrestling writing, writing means
00:03:00it's overproduced, over scripted, over controlled, micromanaged, homogenized, sanitized, pasteurized.
00:03:05The little cellophane wrapper on the toilet seat at the super eight, it's sanitized for
00:03:09your protection.
00:03:11With wrestling booking, basically somebody has to have an eye for talent and a knowledge
00:03:17of what the matches are supposed to look like and maybe what the fans might want to see.
00:03:22You take some interesting, unique, and charismatic personalities.
00:03:26You bring them into your territory.
00:03:27You put them in a position where you can expose them to the public and get them over where
00:03:30the people are interested in them, whether they are predisposed to like them or to hate
00:03:34them.
00:03:35Then you manipulate them into a personal situation or a quest for a championship where they're
00:03:39going to fight each other and you sell tickets to it.
00:03:42That's harder than writing.
00:03:44You put a chimpanzee in front of a typewriter and give him an infinite amount of time and
00:03:47paper and sooner or later, he's got to pull a surprise winner, but a chimpanzee cannot
00:03:53book because you have to deal with personalities.
00:03:56That's what's been lost in the transition to wrestling writing is now everything sounds
00:04:01the same and everybody talks the same.
00:04:05I always say, Stephanie McMahon, I never had a crossword with her.
00:04:09She's a nice girl, but she was the boss's daughter and her main qualification for booking
00:04:14is that she's the boss's daughter.
00:04:15She couldn't book Lassie in a pet shop.
00:04:20People think you've got a degree in creative writing and you have written television that
00:04:25entitles you to be able to write wrestling.
00:04:27Well, you can write wrestling, but you can't book wrestling.
00:04:30Where did we lose that?
00:04:31When was the emphasis put on writing over booking?
00:04:35When corporate America took over the TBS buyout, they didn't know what they were doing, then
00:04:40the territories went by the wayside.
00:04:44When there was a strong territory in almost every part of the country, the promoter took
00:04:48care of his business in his territory and all of the promoters together took care of
00:04:54their business all across the country and you didn't let people reinvent the wheel or
00:04:58fix what wasn't broke or whatever tired cliche you want to use.
00:05:03All of a sudden, everybody got involved.
00:05:06Everybody can be a promoter.
00:05:07Everybody can be a booker or a writer.
00:05:09Everybody can be a wrestler practically anymore.
00:05:11All of a sudden, it got very, very watered down to where television took over and you
00:05:18have to serve the demands of television and pay-per-view and networks.
00:05:25Wrestling got too big for its own good and at the same time, it constricted and got real
00:05:28small.
00:05:29You were a wrestling fan growing up.
00:05:31When did you first become aware that there was a booker pulling the strings, that there
00:05:35was a master of puppets behind what you were seeing?
00:05:37Probably about a week before I actually made my debut on television.
00:05:42I'm not kidding with you.
00:05:44I became a wrestling fan when I was nine and I started as a photographer and teenage ring
00:05:50announcer, gopher boy for Christine Jarrett when I was 14 and did that for six years,
00:05:56doing magazines and programs and announcing it, etc., and anything that I could do, going
00:06:02poster in a town for a time or two for Christine Jarrett.
00:06:06I guess the first time I ever heard the phrase high spot, I was in the locker room at Channel
00:06:105 TV for my first week of Memphis television.
00:06:13After six years, I very seldom was allowed in the locker room.
00:06:17The business was protected.
00:06:18There was no internet.
00:06:21There was no way to ... I found out about the Blade when I was at Ringside taking pictures
00:06:25and I thought Jimmy Valiant at first, I thought he sharpened his thumbnail.
00:06:28I'm like, oh my God.
00:06:32Slowly these things, if you observe, and I tried to study the matches.
00:06:35I would anticipate the bumps so I could shoot them.
00:06:40You were around long enough.
00:06:41I picked up carny just by having guys talk carny in front of me so they wouldn't smarten
00:06:45me up, but you really didn't understand that and that's what made it so much easier to
00:06:52get into wrestling and become a good talent because you didn't have a clue shit from Shinola
00:06:57about how this was done or what was done until you learned it the right way when they allowed
00:07:02you in.
00:07:03When they allowed you in and the veterans told you, this is what we do, this is how
00:07:07we do it, become more complicated than that, but you know what I'm saying, over a period
00:07:10of time, you learned the right way, but now that every putz with an internet can, oh okay,
00:07:16the blade and K-fabe and Mark and Angle and all this stuff and so and so dropping the
00:07:21belt, they figure out what they think wrestling is and they generally think it's a display
00:07:27of moves and then it's harder to untrain somebody that's learned the wrong way and then train
00:07:33them the right way than it is to train them the right way from scratch.
00:07:36Would you say that the biggest thing that's absent today, other than the process is different,
00:07:42but there's no drama it sounds like?
00:07:45Is that where you're going?
00:07:46No, there's plenty of drama.
00:07:47There's too much drama.
00:07:48Generally, the drama's in the locker room or in the office instead of on television.
00:07:53Look, I'm sorry, just see, I had this beautiful girl all night long beating on my door.
00:08:00Finally, at four o'clock this morning, I got up and let her out, but anyway, the thing
00:08:05is, there's drama.
00:08:07What there isn't is there's not emotion.
00:08:10The people, when believability and credibility was lost in professional wrestling in order
00:08:16to open it up to become mainstream entertainment, in my opinion, the emotion that it could engender
00:08:22from the fans was lost because I've had over 100 people in my career go to jail willingly
00:08:28by taking a swing at me or connecting in front of a cop.
00:08:32Just to get ... Say what you want, people you say, oh, nobody ever believed wrestling
00:08:36was real.
00:08:37If you will go to jail just to take a swing at the bad guy wrestling manager or punch
00:08:43him out or whatever, if you will go to jail, knowing you're going to jail, you're doing
00:08:46it in front of a cop.
00:08:48I don't care.
00:08:49You believed something.
00:08:50They believed I was a prick in some fashion, so that kind of emotion, the heat that the
00:08:56heels had and conversely, the admiration, adulation, love that the baby faces had because
00:09:02they were the ones that were trying to vanquish those evil heels, that emotion is gone.
00:09:07People are not going to make that kind of emotional investment in what they know to
00:09:10be a choreographed performance.
00:09:15The ticket prices are bigger and the dolls are in Wal-Mart, but you don't have heat and
00:09:19you don't have 10,000 people in the Mid-South Coliseum every Monday night or Charlotte Coliseum
00:09:25or whatever repeatedly over and over until Dusty finally wins, the rock and roll finally
00:09:29wins, Jerry Lawler finally wins.
00:09:31You could run the same match in a town 13 weeks in a row until a baby face won.
00:09:36Now it's, okay, we saw that one.
00:09:37We'll wait until they do something else.
00:09:40Okay, so who are some of the bookers that influenced you?
00:09:44Well, like I said, I grew up in the Memphis territory and Jerry Jarrett was the promoter
00:09:50after Nick Goulis.
00:09:51Really when I got involved in the business, Jerry was the promoter and you always thought
00:09:56the promoter made the matches.
00:09:58I didn't realize until I'd gotten involved a little bit more that there was somebody
00:10:03else.
00:10:04I mean, Jerry a lot of times was his own booker and he was fabulous.
00:10:07He set the tone.
00:10:09Just like Bill Watts always employed a booker, but by the same token, it was his style of
00:10:14wrestling, what he thought that should be presented to the fans in his area.
00:10:19They're going to like this.
00:10:20We're going to educate them to buy this.
00:10:21This is the style we present.
00:10:23But Bill Dundee would book, Jerry Lawler would book Memphis.
00:10:27They'd trade back and forth.
00:10:29Jerry Jarrett would step in if he wanted to.
00:10:32The first time I really had a clue there was a booker was Robert Fuller was booking.
00:10:39The Fullers owned the Knoxville territory, but he'd come over to Memphis and he was the
00:10:42booker.
00:10:43He brought over Professor Tanaka, Mr. Fuji, Gorgeous George Jr., Mongolia Stomper.
00:10:48The booker would bring his own crew in, guys he liked to use.
00:10:52Business was not doing too well.
00:10:54One week, all those guys were on the card and the next week, none of those guys were
00:10:57on the card.
00:10:58That's when I kind of figured, yeah, okay, I'm starting to get a hold of that.
00:11:03But when I got in the business and learned what was going on, obviously Jerry Jarrett
00:11:08impressed me quite a bit.
00:11:10Just the way that he was able to be successful that early for that long in a territory with
00:11:15cities that small.
00:11:17Bill Dundee was a great finish man.
00:11:20He was a booker, but once again, he didn't write, he manipulated.
00:11:23He put guys together that he knew could draw money and then he gave them finishes that
00:11:27would lead to returns that would sell tickets.
00:11:29Then, of course, we went to Louisiana, Bill Watts, even though Dundee was his booker at
00:11:33the time.
00:11:34Watts was, to me, was a genius and then he told me he learned from Eddie Graham.
00:11:41It's like, what was that old Western where, well, I'm fast but so and so is faster and
00:11:46so and so is faster than him.
00:11:47There's always somebody better.
00:11:49He learned from Eddie Graham and Eddie Graham also taught Dusty Rose.
00:11:53Anybody that's talked about Eddie Graham would say, and I never got to work for him,
00:11:57but they would say the epitome of what a booker was, he had the finishes and the mind and
00:12:02he could see it coming.
00:12:03I think Kevin Sullivan speaks highly because he learned from Eddie Graham.
00:12:09Those guys, they were successful, they were successful in more than one area.
00:12:15That's how you measure success is when somebody's been successful either in more than one thing
00:12:20in wrestling or in more than one place in wrestling, to me.
00:12:23Gotcha.
00:12:24We're going to deal with WCW.
00:12:26I'd like to deal with WCW.
00:12:31Take us back to Crockett's days and take us backstage, behind the scenes, and tell us
00:12:39what that was like.
00:12:41How did that operation run?
00:12:43Was everything coming from Jim Crockett?
00:12:45How much freedom did Dusty and whoever was booking it, the Oli, whoever had it?
00:12:50When I worked for Crockett, the only booker he ever had was Dusty because Starcade was
00:12:54Dusty's concept.
00:12:55I think Dory Funk Jr. was booking at the time of the first Starcade in 83, but it was Dusty's
00:13:01concept.
00:13:02When it got over so well, Dusty was booking in Florida at the time, but then I think Crockett
00:13:06brought him up maybe end of 84, somewhere around there, and he booked until Crockett
00:13:12sold to TBS.
00:13:15With Dusty, once again, he was a big picture guy.
00:13:17J.J. Dillon was his assistant, and J.J. was a detail guy.
00:13:21J.J. had the handwriting for one thing that the boys could actually read.
00:13:26He'd put the lineup up.
00:13:27It'd be people's initials, J.C. and D.C. versus F.U. and M.O.U.S.E., but Dusty, obviously,
00:13:35he would lay out the television, and he would basically give it to J.J. to fill in, and
00:13:42then he would lay it out for the talent.
00:13:45But, see, once again, Dusty did not micromanage because he booked talent that he knew could
00:13:50draw money and sell tickets, so he wouldn't sit down with you and for 20 minutes drill
00:13:55into your head.
00:13:56You've got to say this, and this, and this, and this, and this.
00:13:58He would say, okay, last time at Charlotte Coliseum, it was no disqualification, and
00:14:04Cornette, you rolled in.
00:14:05You whacked Ricky Morton with the racket, so this time they've asked for a cage, so
00:14:08go out there and talk about it.
00:14:09Charlotte Coliseum, June the 24th, cage, midnight rock and roll is for the titles.
00:14:13Sell me some tickets.
00:14:14And if I went out there and did a great promo and sold him some tickets and he left me alone,
00:14:18if I went out there and did a shitty promo and nobody came, then he just, he didn't bother
00:14:23me.
00:14:24He just scratched my name off the fucking sheet.
00:14:27He came up with finishes that he thought would draw for returns.
00:14:29He came up with matchups he thought people wanted to see, and that was the epitome of
00:14:34wrestling, booking.
00:14:35And it's hard, and it's harder, really, than, like I said, than writing.
00:14:40And a lot of people knock Dusty for, well, he bankrupted Crockett.
00:14:44As a matter of fact, in my new book, The Midnight Express and Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary
00:14:49Scrapbook, available at jimcornette.com.
00:14:51Shameless plugs.
00:14:52There's a lot of color in there, folks.
00:14:53It's really nice.
00:14:54Slick paper.
00:14:55Feel that.
00:14:56But besides that, I go into a lot of stories about this, but I feel like the home shopping
00:15:02network now.
00:15:04But it really was where the talent was allowed to be individuals.
00:15:12And you know, nobody could tell Dick Murdoch how to talk like Dick Murdoch or Dusty or
00:15:16Flair or the Horseman or, you know, he had talent there working for him.
00:15:22And people blamed Dusty because, well, you know, Crockett Promotions went broke.
00:15:27I tell the story, it wasn't Dusty that bankrupted Crockett Promotions, it was Crockett's accountant.
00:15:33He had the same office staff that he had when he was running North and South Carolina and
00:15:37Virginia, when he was running all over the country and buying promotions and buying airplanes.
00:15:42And they got in over there.
00:15:43And they found out, one day he was running a successful company and the next morning
00:15:46he found out he was $2 million in the hole.
00:15:49The whole story is in there.
00:15:50It takes too long to tell.
00:15:51But the move to Dallas didn't help.
00:15:52I defend Dusty.
00:15:53Well, you know, they had a huge office out there because everybody said, if you want
00:15:57to be national, you've got to be in a big media market, right?
00:16:01I was just in Richmond, Virginia, last night.
00:16:03I go in the Hampton Inn at 1045 and the guy behind the counter is 38 years old.
00:16:09Midnight Express!
00:16:10Last week, or last month, rather, I was in Greensboro, North Carolina for two nights
00:16:13at a Hampton Inn.
00:16:14Notice the pattern here.
00:16:15I got the card.
00:16:17And everybody there, it wasn't, you managed the WWF champion or you were, you know, you're
00:16:22on Spike TV now.
00:16:23It was Midnight Express, Jim Cornette!
00:16:26Because it's the Carolinas, it's Crockett country.
00:16:28I mean, the night guy brought a tennis racket for me to sign the next night.
00:16:31You know, I'm posing for pictures with the maids.
00:16:33They still remember it was that strong.
00:16:35I'm not saying I'm over that much, I'm saying anybody that was on Crockett Promotions television
00:16:40was over that much and still is for the people old enough to have seen it because wrestling
00:16:46was so, it was on fire in the Carolinas.
00:16:50It was ingrained in their DNA.
00:16:52And not only that though, you had national reach through TBS.
00:16:56I had it up here in New York.
00:16:58So when we started branching out to Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., Philly and Baltimore, Chicago
00:17:04were all tremendous towns.
00:17:06You know, there were really NWA strongholds and a lot of cases we would beat, you know,
00:17:11in the 80s, the WWF with, you know, the Hulk Hogan thing because some people liked rock
00:17:16and wrestling and some people liked wrestling.
00:17:20So people liked both and that variety given them that opportunity to have both.
00:17:24I remember the first time you guys came up here was, that I attended, was 84, was it?
00:17:30Night of Champions at the Meadowlands?
00:17:33I don't know if you were on the card.
00:17:34The Meadowlands?
00:17:35We were not here yet.
00:17:36Steve-O Flair was the man.
00:17:37It was a famous show.
00:17:38Yeah, it was great.
00:17:39We were not here yet.
00:17:40We were soon to be and we, you know, they got it started and then we came in and went
00:17:46right down and talked.
00:17:47But let's talk about that divide between yesterday and today and also maybe a little bit about,
00:17:53you know, Crockett and the Northeast.
00:17:56When you got, you're an outspoken guy.
00:17:58You don't...
00:17:59No.
00:18:00I'm really, I'm quiet.
00:18:01You know, you don't like to guard me.
00:18:02You don't play the politics very well.
00:18:03You let people know how you feel.
00:18:05Well, I'm too old to put up with horse shit.
00:18:08You know, at this point.
00:18:09Were you any different 10 years, 15 years ago when you were in?
00:18:12Yes, I was.
00:18:13Really?
00:18:14Because I worked for people who knew what the fuck they were doing and they didn't drive
00:18:17me crazy and it wasn't until, you know, everything went to hell and all the territories went
00:18:21away that, you know, either the WWF, WCW drove me crazy, WWF drove me crazy twice.
00:18:28You know, now I'm really actually happy and my blood pressure is down.
00:18:31But you know, for about 10 years there, from the early 90s to the early 2000s, I was convinced,
00:18:41probably foolishly so, that wrestling could be brought back, that it could be, that our
00:18:46business could be somehow resurrected.
00:18:49Lightning would strike, Eddie Graham would come back to life.
00:18:52People would forget about the internet and everything would be as it was before.
00:18:54And then I realized, you know, no, it ain't gonna happen and no matter what I do and no
00:18:59matter how, you know, crazy I get over it, it's not gonna help.
00:19:04And so then I just said, okay, now I don't really care as much.
00:19:08But you know, it's gone.
00:19:09But at the time, actually in the 90s, it was only 5, 6, 7 years from when everything was
00:19:15hot and buildings were drawn, huge crowds and people were watching wrestling on television
00:19:19and a lot of guys were making a lot of money and nobody was, you know, dropping over dead.
00:19:24Nobody had bad publicity.
00:19:25There wasn't all this horseshit there is now.
00:19:27And so it could reasonably have been assumed that, you know, maybe we just, we got off
00:19:31our path there for a little while, but we can come back.
00:19:33But now everybody knows everything, all our tools have been taken away.
00:19:38You know, you can have the, you know, the wrestling show, but wrestling as we knew it
00:19:43and as a mainstream attraction, I don't think is going to be able to come back.
00:19:50You worked with, you were talking about the Crockett's, you were there when Dusty was
00:19:54booking and Dusty would give you the pointers and give you the promo and allow kind of the
00:19:59natural magnetism of each individual character to kind of emanate and sell the tickets.
00:20:04You know, the details were almost secondary because God damn, I got to see that person
00:20:07and you do the work to find out where I can get my hands around his throat.
00:20:12And now you're in WWE F, right?
00:20:15I'm going to say F a lot.
00:20:16Well, I'm going to say F a lot, but I'm going to say WWF a lot too because it flows better
00:20:21instead of WWF and also, you know, years of training.
00:20:26Yeah.
00:20:27But, but, okay.
00:20:28So you've got that, that, that we were just talking about.
00:20:29Then you're, you're up in WWF and there's Ric Flair holding a script.
00:20:32How do you operate in an environment like that?
00:20:35Well, actually I was not there in WWF at the same time as Flair was, but still a point.
00:20:40A good talker.
00:20:41Well, you know, and the thing is, Cactus is so good that there's some guys that are so
00:20:48good that even the script writers will not hand them a, they'll hand them a script, but
00:20:52they know what they're going to get back is that guy's version of that.
00:20:56But excuse me, that's a Bob Evans sausage gravy talking.
00:21:00But you know, so many guys now that, that don't have the experience doing television
00:21:05or that, that don't have the pull to say, you know, I really don't think I'd say that,
00:21:09but I could say something better.
00:21:10They can't do that.
00:21:11They don't have the pull.
00:21:12So you see this mindless droning of these, you know, like the deer caught in the headlights
00:21:18look because I'm, I'm really, I'm looking at the camera, but what I'm trying to do is
00:21:21memorize, recite what I have memorized from looking at a piece of paper with all the passion
00:21:27and emotion of a Stepford wife while I tell you that I absolutely do not believe what
00:21:33I am saying is true because somebody else has put the words in your mouth.
00:21:39Once again, difference between writing and booking in booking, I take this really interesting
00:21:44character that people like, and I take this really interesting character who people think
00:21:48is a prick and I give them a reason to fight and I sell tickets for it and I let them be
00:21:53themselves because that's why people were interested in them in the first place.
00:21:57And if a guy can't talk, you get him a manager, get him a manager, matchmaker versus creator,
00:22:01you know, and, and, and, you know, if, and if the manager doesn't work, then you get
00:22:04a new guy.
00:22:06You know, it's, it's not that hard, but, but now it's also, there's the preposterous aspect
00:22:13when you've got, I mean, you know, we could go all day long with the things that, that
00:22:18I think that Vince McMahon and his minions have done to wrestling, but whether it be
00:22:23the necrophilia or the transvestite blowjob on Mark Henry, or just the preposterosity
00:22:29to coin a phrase of any stupid shit, you, wrestling operated on one basic principle.
00:22:37Don't do anything if it couldn't really possibly happen.
00:22:41It might be far-fetched, Jerry Jarrett was a master at it.
00:22:44No matter what kind of crazy, insane bullshit was going on, it actually was rooted in enough
00:22:51logic or something, you just thought, these are crazy people.
00:22:55You didn't think, it's phony people doing this shit to get a rise out of us, you thought,
00:22:59these are crazy people.
00:23:00They're really crazy, and in most cases they were, in a crazy and a good way, maybe not
00:23:05so much anymore, crazy in a bad way, I don't know.
00:23:10Let's, let's, let's create here an imaginary great booker, what, what do I have to throw
00:23:16in this stew?
00:23:17Oh, geez.
00:23:19Insanity, black tar, Mexican heroin, no, once again, I think, and by the way, at JimCornett.com,
00:23:28as a matter of fact, the Cornett's commentary that's up as we speak, of course you won't
00:23:32see it now, but I'm sure it'll be archived, is my take on the difference between wrestling,
00:23:36writing, and booking.
00:23:37Boy, I'm going to plug this thing for all it's worth.
00:23:40A great booker, once again, can pick great talent, and a great booker knows what talent
00:23:47complements each other to work the magic in the ring and draw money out of it, and a great
00:23:52booker knows, has restraint, and knows when not to hot shot, because in this business,
00:23:58every period of hot shotting in a particular territory has been followed by an equally
00:24:02long if not longer period of drought, where business was down, because once you do everything
00:24:08you can do, you numb and immune the people to your angles and injuries or whatever, which
00:24:14is what the hardcore wrestling fan did, and I'm sure we'll get to that here in a little
00:24:17while also, but it used to be, if a guy took, if the heel took a roll of quarters and punched
00:24:23a guy in the mouth and the quarters flew and he went down, he came up, he's bleeding, my
00:24:27God, he'd run for three months with that.
00:24:29I mean, a guy goes to the hospital, whatever, he gets stitched up, now they see people fly
00:24:35through flaming furniture with thumbtacks and broken glass stacked on it with the AIDS
00:24:40infected hypodermic needles ringing, you know, and then you go to break and come back and
00:24:46well, here comes a midget match, oh well, can't grieve forever, you know, it doesn't
00:24:52make any sense.
00:24:54What we've done is we have taken a business where grown men pretended to hurt each other
00:25:00but really didn't and people believed that they were and paid to see it and turned it
00:25:05into a business where grown men really do hurt each other and nobody believes they are
00:25:10and fewer of them pay to see it.
00:25:12Who's the marks?
00:25:13Who's the marks?
00:25:15You said something very funny, it's so true one time, I don't know what event you were
00:25:19talking about, it might have been an indie show actually, where somebody actually got
00:25:22hurt by being tossed outside the ring, didn't grab the roll, but got hurt, and everybody
00:25:28stopped, the worker stopped, the ref stopped, and you said, why the fuck didn't you count
00:25:32them out of the ring, you're supposed to be hurt.
00:25:33Yeah, because it wasn't the finish, so I didn't know what to do.
00:25:36Yeah, but that's a great commentary on today's.
00:25:40Guys are going overtime on television, right, or overtime at a house show, I was at a show
00:25:45the other night for an old friend of mine that's running Charlotte and he asked me to
00:25:48come over and take a look and the match is good and it looked like it was just going
00:25:52on forever, I mean I had a birthday watching this match, right, and it was really, I'm
00:25:58not going to name any names because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but it was so
00:26:00bad it was hurting the fans' feelings, and so the promoter actually gets on the microphone
00:26:06and says, two minutes left on the match, and they realize, oh shit, he's telling us to
00:26:11hurry up, so instead of going home and ending the match, what did they do?
00:26:15They went into the same series that they had planned when they sat back in the locker room,
00:26:20because they had to get their shit in, even though the shit they got in so far was some
00:26:24pretty shitty shit, they had to get their shit in before they could just, small package,
00:26:29small package, sunset flip, just get out of there, one, two, three, but no, they go in
00:26:33this long, who shot John, bunch of bullshit, leading up to this spectacular finish, you
00:26:38know, fucking crickets chirping, I saw three fans bring back the tickets they bought last
00:26:42month, because they didn't know how to do it any other way, they had, what we talked
00:26:48about, the fans weren't in on the meeting, they didn't know, they wouldn't have been
00:26:52offended, I don't think they'd have been offended if spontaneous combustion had happened
00:26:55and it all caught on fire, but that's a different story, and they wouldn't have known what was
00:26:58to come, because they hadn't seen it either, real funny booking story with you before we
00:27:03finish, conclude this chapter, I don't know what you were booking for, it might have been
00:27:09an indie thing, oh you said what, I thought you said why I was booking, no, no, no, and
00:27:15you had the guys come up with a list in the locker room of all the creative finishes they'd
00:27:19ever seen, and you had them do them all, and then you had a very funny finish, what
00:27:23was that, oh yeah, oh gosh, oh my gosh, it was up here, it was up here in the northeast,
00:27:29was it one of the Candido shows, I think it was, and it may have been, it may have been
00:27:34my friends Devin Storm and Ace Darling, or it may have been, I'm trying to think, it
00:27:40may have been on one of Dennis Corluzzo's shows, but basically, yeah I remember it was
00:27:44a couple guys that really were pretty good at what they did, and I said go out there
00:27:48and tear the house down, but do like six of the most cliched finishes that when wrestling
00:27:55fans see this happen, they know immediately that's the finish, but kick out at two, and
00:27:59then small package, boom, one, two, three, and people went wow, and it just, it worked,
00:28:06I did an Ohio Valley wrestling one time, we had a king of the hill match type of thing,
00:28:13where two guys start, and the winner of that match, another guy jumps in the ring, he immediately
00:28:17wrestles him, the winner of that, another guy jumps in the ring, he immediately wrestles
00:28:20him, and it continues on, we did a whole television show, the match lasted almost 40 minutes on
00:28:25television, and the finish was Matt Morgan beating Mark Henry with a body slam, because
00:28:32Matt Morgan's a 7 foot giant, Mark Henry was 450 pounds, and nobody ever body slammed him,
00:28:37so we did a 40 minute match with all these twists and turns, and you know we had two
00:28:41baby faces wrestle each other, the mentor and the student, and the student beat the
00:28:44teacher, and then they shook hands, and then the heel comes in and fucks the young baby
00:28:47face, and blah, blah, blah, but we ended up a 40 minute match, the finish was a body slam,
00:28:51and the people threw the babies in the air, because they understood it, they liked it,
00:28:56and the guys got it over, that was the meaning of developmental territory, let guys develop,
00:29:02so I let them go out there and get themselves over in their individual little segment in
00:29:05that match, and they got the match over that way, and people wanted to see more of it instead
00:29:09of less.
00:29:14So let's paint the picture, 2001 WCW, who's in charge of creative over there at the time?
00:29:27I don't have a fucking clue, and before I give people the impression that I'm speaking
00:29:35of stuff that I don't know anything about, let me say I don't know anything about it,
00:29:37because in 1999, July of 99, I moved back to Louisville, got out of Stanford, was paroled
00:29:44from the Titan Towers, and briefly it was my deal, I had been up there, I had been on
00:29:51creative for a couple of years, and I was glad when I got the job, and I was glad when
00:29:56I got rid of it, and I had worked in the television studio, which I loved doing color with Jim
00:30:01Ross doing play by play, I learned so much, I loved announcing with JR, everybody liked
00:30:04our work inside the office, and the viewers, except for Kevin Dunn, the executive vice
00:30:11asshole, I mean president of Titan, or WWE, whatever they're calling themselves these
00:30:17days to stay ahead of the law, we were too Southern, too Southern together, because they
00:30:22got that Southern thing going on, because the whole world revolves around New York and
00:30:27Connecticut, and everybody else just follows suit, so they split us up, and I was working
00:30:33with the third party promoters and scouting talent, and I really enjoyed that, but at
00:30:38the same time I was living in Connecticut, and I was in jail in Baton Rouge one time,
00:30:42I enjoyed that just a little bit more than living in Connecticut, so they were training
00:30:47guys in a warehouse, and the warehouse at the TV studio, Tom Pritchard was working out
00:30:53with, Sean Stasiak was there, and Kurt Angle started out in the warehouse, and a bunch
00:30:59of guys that, you know, name some, you'd know some you wouldn't, but there was the
00:31:03sawdust fumes when they were building sets, and the guys that dubbed tapes would stop
00:31:07by, they'd be eating lunch and watching the guys work out, and it was just a cold, dry,
00:31:13feedbackless atmosphere, and every once in a while they'd do a spot show in Massachusetts,
00:31:17and I went to Jim Ross because I had gone back home to Louisville and run into Danny
00:31:21Davis, my old friend, who I'd managed when I started in Memphis in 82, and he had opened
00:31:26up a wrestling school in Louisville that had become somewhat successful to where that
00:31:31he started running house shows, you know, those spot shows, and then he got a television
00:31:35on a low-power station, and he was doing things on a shoestring, but you know, he could train
00:31:40guys, and it was successful, and it was also in my hometown, and I knew it could be more
00:31:44successful, so I went to Jim Ross, and I said, you know, it's only a matter of time because
00:31:47I've run through a number of things here that they have me doing, and for one reason or
00:31:51another, you know, me and Vince Russo butted heads in the creative thing, and me and Kevin
00:31:56Dunn butted heads on the TV thing, and also, one of these days I'm going to prison because
00:32:01I live in Connecticut, and somebody, I'm going to flip, how about if I move back to Louisville,
00:32:06and we start an official developmental territory, because they'd been sending guys to Memphis,
00:32:12you know, to work for Lawler, to work for Randy Hales, but they were only running three
00:32:16shows a week or so in the live TV, and there was no place for guys to go to school there.
00:32:21It wasn't full service.
00:32:22So anyway, I said, I would go back to Louisville, and work with Danny, and we would contract,
00:32:27because I bought a piece of OVW, quite frankly, you know, because I wanted to promote wrestling
00:32:32in my hometown, and live there, and we contracted with the WWE to serve as a developmental program.
00:32:39We would take guys, and we would give them experience on live events, and on doing television,
00:32:44and also a school where they could actually train, and you know, that way we could replenish,
00:32:50restock the shelves, because when the territories went away, the training ground went away,
00:32:56and you had an inexperienced talent, guys were getting hurt, guys weren't ready for
00:33:00prime time, whatever the case.
00:33:03Let's start this now, because in five years, we're really going to need it, is what I said
00:33:06in 1999.
00:33:08Well, we started it, and with Jim Ross, who understood wrestling, and who understood how
00:33:13to relay, I'll tell you a story that Bill Watts told me that illustrates how Jim Ross
00:33:16would work with you.
00:33:18Bill Watts said that Vince McMahon Sr., back in the 70s, 80s, if he wanted, say, you know,
00:33:26Bill Watts' top heel was Waldo Von Erich, if he wanted Waldo Von Erich, Vince Sr. was
00:33:31going to get Waldo Von Erich, because the Northeast, Madison Square Garden, he could
00:33:35pay guys more money than they would make in most other territories, so if he wanted a
00:33:39guy, a guy was going to go.
00:33:40But at the same time, he didn't just rape every territory of talent, which his son would
00:33:45have followed suit.
00:33:47What he would do is he'd call Bill Watts, he'd say, Bill, I really need Waldo starting
00:33:51TV on September 20th, can you make him available for me?
00:33:55Well, of course, Vince, I'd be glad to.
00:33:57Thank you, Bill, I'll give you an extra week of dates on Andre.
00:34:00Andre, right, sure.
00:34:01And then there's a week of sellouts in the territory, so it was, you worked together.
00:34:06Jim Ross understood that we were running our own business, and that we had to sell tickets,
00:34:11and we had to make some money to pay the bills and keep the thing going so that we could
00:34:15contract to WWEF for this training service and develop these guys.
00:34:21So he would give us a few weeks' notice if somebody was going to be called up, or
00:34:25somebody was going to start going on the road, or if somebody was being sent down that we
00:34:29need to take a look at.
00:34:30He had his shit together.
00:34:32It was very easy to book talent with Jim Ross, because if Jim Ross said that somebody was
00:34:35going to be there, they were there, even if the WWE had to go to expense to get out of
00:34:40something that they had gotten into because they'd promised, they'd given their word.
00:34:45We ran, between the summer of 2000 and the summer of 2001, three shows at the Louisville
00:34:50Gardens that drew a combined over 11,000 fans paid and over $150,000 at the gate.
00:34:56We partnered with Clear Channel Radio, we had sponsors.
00:34:59The sellout, the Christmas Chaos Show 2001, which was actually, the show was so nice we
00:35:04had to promote it twice.
00:35:05We had a date booked, December 13, 2000, snowstorm came, nobody could get there.
00:35:11We postponed it until January 31st, same card, and still sold out.
00:35:15Everybody kept their tickets, nobody got refunds, more people came.
00:35:18Anyway, we paid Steve Austin $25,000 to come down and do a live interview with Jim Ross,
00:35:24and Kane was the main event against the Leviathan, who was Batista, because we trained in that
00:35:29period of time, Batista, Randy Orton, John Cena, etc.
00:35:34We were a successful local promotion.
00:35:37We weren't going to get any bigger, didn't want to get any bigger.
00:35:39We wanted to do just what we were doing, get our sponsors locally and draw houses.
00:35:44So Jim Ross would book these guys and we would pay them well to come down, and then also
00:35:49it was a place where Jim Ross could say, you need to lose weight, or you just got out of
00:35:54the hospital from surgery, you need to get back in shape, or you need to get your wind
00:35:57back, or we need to take a look at you.
00:35:59Then they'd come to Louisville Workforce for free, because it was helping OVW, but it was
00:36:04also helping the WWE, and it was helping the guy that came down and did that.
00:36:07And they'd stay on the payroll in connection?
00:36:09They would stay on the payroll.
00:36:10They were paying them, but we paid guys when we featured them and made money off of them,
00:36:14or when we were providing the service that we contracted to with the WWE, they were sent
00:36:18down to work for us, and they were paying them.
00:36:20But we worked together.
00:36:21There were all kinds of different ways you could do things.
00:36:24When JR started slowing down and deciding to move back to Oklahoma, and they started
00:36:29grooming, like grooming a werewolf, to groom John Laurinaitis for JR's spot, he couldn't
00:36:34hold his jock, so now he's walking in his shoes, Laurinaitis didn't know what the fuck
00:36:38he was doing.
00:36:39I'm sorry, John, you know you're a complete fucking idiot, and you're a liar.
00:36:42You know, he would, then we started, the thing is-
00:36:45Does anyone like him?
00:36:46No.
00:36:47Not in the world.
00:36:48No.
00:36:49I haven't met anyone.
00:36:50His own mother slapped the stork that delivered him.
00:36:54They would take guys, and they would fire them out from under us.
00:36:58They'd be working for us.
00:36:59We'd have championship belts on them, and one day they wouldn't show up, and we'd get
00:37:02a call from the office, oh, we had to let them go.
00:37:05Well, are they gonna come back to finish up?
00:37:06Oh no, once we fire them, we give them their notice, we don't let them work anymore, because
00:37:10if they get hurt, then we gotta pay them until they're well, because we can't fire people
00:37:13that are injured.
00:37:14So they wouldn't even give us the call saying, hey, you better, you know, wind so-and-so
00:37:18up, because he might not be around too long.
00:37:19They'd just fire people, and we'd never see them again.
00:37:22Or they would send guys to us, they'd call us up on Tuesday, yeah, we're sending so-and-so
00:37:27tomorrow for television.
00:37:28Oh, we need you to use them on TV.
00:37:30I can't.
00:37:31TV's written.
00:37:32Well, stick them in.
00:37:33I can't stick them in.
00:37:34I've had the fucking show written.
00:37:35I do this myself.
00:37:36What do you think, we got a fucking crew down here that re-racks all this shit on spur-of-the-moment
00:37:41notice?
00:37:42Why didn't you call me two weeks ago?
00:37:43They didn't know two weeks ago, because they didn't have their shit together.
00:37:47Or one time we were promoting a show at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom with Randy Orton, who
00:37:52we had on paper from John Laurinaitis was supposed to be there on that date, and Tommy
00:37:57Dreamer calls us and says, well, he ain't gonna be there.
00:37:59He bought a non-refundable vacation for his family.
00:38:03Why did he do that?
00:38:04Well, I don't think John ever told him.
00:38:06Then Laurinaitis says, oh, no, it was Dreamer.
00:38:09Dreamer didn't tell him.
00:38:10Dreamer says, no, that's bullshit.
00:38:11Laurinaitis is the one that was supposed to tell him, because Laurinaitis is the head
00:38:14of this fucking bowl of fruits and nuts.
00:38:18You didn't know who to believe.
00:38:19You just pretty well knew not to believe John Laurinaitis.
00:38:21I'll tell you a story.
00:38:24Doug Basham.
00:38:25Here's another guy that they fucked and mind-raped and ran out of the business that could have
00:38:28been a great talent.
00:38:31He looked great.
00:38:32His physique was tremendous.
00:38:34He was an old-time worker.
00:38:35He could talk.
00:38:36He was really getting it.
00:38:37He had seven years' experience in the business.
00:38:40I'm using him as my top heel.
00:38:41Danny Davis's nephew.
00:38:44He was Danny's first student, and Danny had really taken care.
00:38:46I'm not saying nepotism.
00:38:48I'm saying Danny really took care training him, because he was family, and he was good.
00:38:53He was real good.
00:38:55He's my top heel.
00:38:56He's got long hair, and he's cocky, and he's wearing the black leather pants.
00:38:59He's ripped, and he's great, right?
00:39:01He walks in TV one night.
00:39:02He's bald-headed.
00:39:03He looked like a 40-year-old truck driver.
00:39:05I said, well, what the fuck did you do?
00:39:07He said, well, I was at, you know, they had me come to Raw, and Creative wanted to see
00:39:13what I looked like bald.
00:39:14I said, they can't just fucking pretend.
00:39:17So I get on the phone.
00:39:18I call Lourinaitis for this voice, John Lourinaitis, it's Jim Cornette.
00:39:22My top heel just walked into fucking television, looks like a 40-year-old truck driver.
00:39:26Would you please tell this alleged Creative team that if they can't fucking pretend or
00:39:30imagine what a guy looks like bald, give me two weeks' notice.
00:39:33I'll book him in a hair match.
00:39:34I'll shave it, and I'll sell some tickets.
00:39:37Fuck you.
00:39:38Bye.
00:39:39Boom.
00:39:40It was constant.
00:39:41It was constant.
00:39:42They slapped us in the face.
00:39:43They disrespected us.
00:39:45We had trained close to a hundred people who made the full-time roster.
00:39:51Guys and girls, to some extent, either started in OVW, I mean, we found them, and then they
00:39:57signed them after we trained them, or they were signed by WWF and sent down there, and
00:40:02we trained them, or they were already in the business, but they spent some time getting
00:40:05polished before they went there.
00:40:08No other developmental program that they ever had lasted a year.
00:40:12No other developmental program they ever had did anything but leech off of, and I'm
00:40:17not, no, I tell a lie, leech, except for Les Thatcher in Cincinnati.
00:40:22Everybody else leeched off of them, took their money, never made any money of their own,
00:40:26never had a real promotion Pinocchio, and never produced any talent, but yet there we
00:40:32were, and they're going, dang, dang.
00:40:34They used us like a storage closet.
00:40:36They sent us rings we didn't ask for because they wanted us to have WWF rings, including
00:40:42the WWF ropes, which are real ropes.
00:40:44We said, no, somebody's going to get hurt.
00:40:47We use cables because we use the ring in the gym every day.
00:40:50We'll send you extra ropes.
00:40:52So immediately, within two weeks, I think it was Mark Henry, of course he's so heavy,
00:40:57he hits the ropes, they break, he hurts himself.
00:41:00Three guys got hurt on the WWF equipment that they had to have because we couldn't just
00:41:04use cables instead of ropes.
00:41:06They were telling us what brand of Snapple to sell in the concession stand.
00:41:09Oh, don't do business with this guy.
00:41:11We're mad at him.
00:41:12Well, I'm not.
00:41:13He wants to give me money.
00:41:14That don't make me mad.
00:41:15Well, don't do business with him.
00:41:16Are you going to give me the money he was?
00:41:18Oh, we can't do that.
00:41:19If he asked for more money, they'd squeal like a pig under a gate.
00:41:22So you would just- People think, wait a minute, hold on.
00:41:26People think that the WWE owned OVW, or started OVW, or purchased OVW, or paid all our bills.
00:41:33I figured it out one time.
00:41:35At the time that I figured it out, they accounted for 30% of our annual operating revenue, not
00:41:40counting profit, just annual operating revenue, because we sold merchandise.
00:41:45We had sponsors.
00:41:46We ran 120 live events in the course of one year, not in front of tons of people, some
00:41:54of them, but counting the church gyms and the flea markets, we had our guys out in front
00:41:58of people.
00:41:59We ran the Louisville Gardens.
00:42:00We ran Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.
00:42:02We ran St. Teresa's Gym in front of 62 people, but we were running the shows.
00:42:07We had a television show that was not bumped, preempted, or fucked with by our full cable
00:42:13coverage broadcast affiliate, CW Network Station, in Louisville from May 2000 to May 2008, Saturday
00:42:21night at 11 p.m., never been touched.
00:42:23We were doing two-hour primetime specials on Saturday night, leading up to our Louisville
00:42:27Gardens events, or for our anniversary shows.
00:42:29We had a real company, and we wanted some respect.
00:42:33Give us notice when you're taking somebody, give us notice when you're sending somebody,
00:42:37and leave us the fuck alone as to what kind of equipment we want to use, because obviously
00:42:41we're doing a good job.
00:42:42And John Ornitis is a fucking moron, and he couldn't leave well enough alone.
00:42:47And for the last year that I had a relationship with him, like this, I'd call up and yell.
00:42:54He'd call up, Jim, you can't do that, it's a publicly traded company.
00:42:57My response would be, we're not even a privately traded company, we're trying to make some
00:43:00money down here, leave us the fuck alone.
00:43:03I yelled at the guy and called him a stupid son of a bitch because he's fucking with my
00:43:06business.
00:43:07Well, you heard his feelings.
00:43:08He shouldn't have such soft fucking feelings, he's in the wrestling business.
00:43:12And on and on it went, until finally, boom, boom, boom, we agreed not to speak to each
00:43:16other anymore, ever, for the rest of our lives.
00:43:18Now that I got that out of my system, well, see, the question was, hold on, let me tell
00:43:24you.
00:43:25Tell me about WCW, I don't know.
00:43:26No, the question was, yeah.
00:43:28I wanted to know who the creative was.
00:43:30Well, wait a minute, in developmental, there was a question down here, was it a hassle
00:43:33being a booker in a developmental territory?
00:43:35Oh, box of fluffy ducks.
00:43:37So anyway, when I went down to Louisville, I would watch Raw on Monday nights because,
00:43:45here's my week, Friday and Saturday was spot shows, Sunday and Monday were my TV writing
00:43:50days and I wrote everything.
00:43:51I wrote the formats, then I polished the formats, then I wrote the formats down to send to Danny
00:43:56so he could copy them for the talent.
00:43:57I wrote the voiceover copy for our freaking commercials, which I then did the voice, that's
00:44:02why my voice is gone, I was screaming for six years straight.
00:44:05I wrote everything, Danny did all the production, I did all the creative.
00:44:09I was the announcer, Danny was the director, producer, he played the music and timed the
00:44:12show and posted it.
00:44:14I would view the videotapes and tell him what to put in, blah, blah, blah, two-man team.
00:44:20So Friday and Saturday spot shows, Sunday and Monday writing, Tuesday our church gym
00:44:24practice show in 2001, Wednesday was our TV taping, Thursday was my non-wrestling day.
00:44:29Didn't look at wrestling, didn't talk about wrestling, didn't think about wrestling, so
00:44:32I never saw Smackdown.
00:44:33Additionally, July 2001, I finally after having it for over a year, decided that I could finally
00:44:40take three weeks off after our big garden show to have the fun and excitement of having
00:44:45my hernia fixed, 18 surgical staples right there across my crotch.
00:44:50And so I was peeled up for much of July 2001 and don't really remember, but Bruce Prichard
00:44:57was there, that was right about the time that they started putting ads in the trade
00:45:01papers and hiring writers.
00:45:04People that had experience in real television, which is what they think they are up there,
00:45:08they refuse to admit they're wrestling, they think they're action-adventure, longest-running
00:45:13act, like they're fucking Gunsmoke.
00:45:15When's the last time Marshall Dillon ever pulled a chain out of his fucking pocket and
00:45:19hit the fucking outlaw bad guy?
00:45:21Or they think they're I Love Lucy, hey, Vince, you got a lot of splaining to do, they're
00:45:26not real television, they're fucking wrestling, and I would be proud of being wrestling at
00:45:31that level, but they're not, so they think they're TV.
00:45:33So they hire these writers with their college degrees that have written, especially comedy
00:45:38shows, you know, sports entertainment has to be funny.
00:45:41I would teach the guys, funny don't draw money, be serious, respect your business, and then
00:45:46they'd go up there and they'd dress like women and slather themselves with oil and put G-strings
00:45:50on and get blowjobs from transvestites.
00:45:53Anyway, so there was people on the creative team, Stephanie was in charge probably about
00:45:58that point, I don't know who the fuck they were, and the writers would come down once
00:46:04a year to view, here's the thing, oh, let me tell you something else, while I'm on the
00:46:10subject, the writers would come down like once a year, and they would go to OVW, and
00:46:16Brian Gerwitz, fella, about this fucking tall, he once had a screaming fight with Paul Heyman
00:46:22and people were actually betting on the outcome, so you can tell how tough Gerwitz might be,
00:46:25couldn't whip cream with an outboard motor, they'd come down and they'd watch the guys
00:46:29work out and they'd watch the guys do promos.
00:46:32Me and Danny Davis are sitting there, it's Danny the trainer, it's me the booker, they
00:46:36don't ask, is this guy a better baby face, is he a better heel, what's his strengths,
00:46:40what's his weaknesses, how much experience does he have, is he coachable, you know, what's
00:46:44his attitude like, they just look at the gimmicks, what kind of funny suit can he fit?
00:46:49And I was telling Danny this afterwards, he said, I don't really think they know what
00:46:52kind of questions to ask, they have never seen wrestling training before, they have
00:46:57never seen guys working out before, some of them have never seen wrestling matches before,
00:47:02they just get a job because they have TV experience.
00:47:04So anyway, Matt Morgan, 7 foot giant, 320 pounds, natural, can pass the test, believe
00:47:10it or not, 3.8 grade average in college, incredible athlete, can talk, cut a promo, they fucked
00:47:18with his head and put him through some silly fucking things, but finally they let him go,
00:47:23they bring him up once, they make him partners with Big Show, the only human in the world
00:47:28bigger than him, then they sent him back to developmental, then they said, and they fucked
00:47:31with him down there too, he's my top baby face, they said, switch him heel, I want to
00:47:34see him heel, what am I going to have him do, kill Bambi's mother, how am I going to
00:47:38switch my most popular guy, okay, so I figured out a way to do it, then he becomes my top
00:47:42heel, they said, put a mask on him, let's see if it improves his body language, what?
00:47:47Put a mask on him, then it kills him off, once it kills him off, nobody cares about
00:47:50him anymore, then they bring him up there, then they made him a stutterer, remember that?
00:47:55The stuttering goof, Matt Morgan?
00:47:58The guy is the blueprint of the perfect athlete and can cut a great promo, 7 feet tall, youngest
00:48:03giant in business, they make him a stutterer, it's, well see, the thing is, it's he has,
00:48:08he looks perfect, but then you find out he has an imperfection, well fuck, that's the
00:48:13kind of shit I usually take back to the mall and get my money back on, but anyway, I digress,
00:48:18they let him go, they told him, well, creative just doesn't have anything for you, he tells
00:48:23this story to my best friend Kenny Bolin, Kenny Bolin sums it up, never worked for the
00:48:28WWF in his life, summed it up in one sentence, fire the fucking writers, when would Bill
00:48:35Watts or Jim Crockett or Eddie Graham or Vern Gagno or any great promoter in the history
00:48:40of wrestling employ a booker or a writer whose task it was to use his talent and you're
00:48:47paying this fucking guy every week to work for your company, but then the booker would
00:48:53come up and say, I just don't have anything for him, hey, no problem, hey, let me help
00:48:58you with your bag, get it in the car, pat you on the back, hasn't been nice having you,
00:49:04they keep the writers, they fire the fucking talent, talent is what sells tickets in this
00:49:08business, but the writers think that they're more important than the fucking talent, so
00:49:13they don't have anything for him, fire the fucking writers, but you can't fire the writers,
00:49:18because you can't fire your daughter.
00:49:20Well, I was going to say that, but now Vince is, we digress together, we digress together,
00:49:28but he's a guy who's had the business in his blood and in his family forever and here's
00:49:35a guy who was schooled properly on the product, why is it happening?
00:49:43I don't know, trying to explain Vince McMahon, Sigmund Freud would jump out the window, at
00:49:50times you love Vince, at times you hate Vince, at times being around him you develop a twitch,
00:49:56sometimes all three happen at the same time, but I haven't been around him since 1999 except
00:50:02the occasional visit here and there, I don't know what's happened, I know that he was always
00:50:08ashamed of being in the wrestling business because he would call it, at first he invented
00:50:13sports entertainment as a way to con the advertisers, you're not buying that low class wrestling
00:50:17that you think that everybody's toothless trailer park trash that watch, we're doing
00:50:22something new, that was to con the advertisers, that's fine, I'll work with you, but then
00:50:26everybody's hired in the company since then, they tell them that and now over 15, 20 years
00:50:33they believe it, when's the last time that somebody, Bob Evans again, when's the last
00:50:39time somebody said to you, hey did you see the sports entertainment matches on TV last
00:50:42night, hey did you get your sports entertainment tickets yet, are there sports entertainment
00:50:46at the Coliseum tonight, it's fucking wrestling, but wrestling in New York has always been
00:50:52somewhat clownish, it's always been cartoon, had to be more serious down south, smaller
00:50:57population, shows ran more often, had to be serious, had to go on heat, in New York it's
00:51:02all the Indians and the Cowboys and the fucking Zabadon and the fucking Furnham and whatever
00:51:07and it was so somewhat cartoony, but he took it to a whole new level because it became,
00:51:15instead of the Boston Celtics it became the Harlem Globetrotters, it still played with
00:51:19the basketball on a court, it's just completely different and the Globetrotters don't play
00:51:2471 home games or whatever, so anyway, what were we talking about, do you have any fucking
00:51:29idea, invasion, were we really, shit I'd like to see that, I'll get us back, what'd they
00:51:34do wrong, oh Christ, goodnight, I'm leaving, go ahead, what'd they do wrong, I'll do the
00:51:39spit take, the king is dead, everything, everything, I mean, the key you've got to understand is
00:51:50and I wasn't there but I could hear him talking in his ear because I've gone through it, Kevin
00:51:54Dunn, when Mick Foley decided to do Cactus Jack, or they decided to let him, in Madison
00:52:00Square Garden for the first time, Cactus Jack had never been in the WWF so Kevin Dunn was
00:52:05convinced that Mankind was a big star but nobody knew who Cactus Jack was, well nobody's
00:52:09going to know who Cactus, it's just Madison Square Garden, as soon as the music hit and
00:52:13he came out the place blew because they were wrestling fans, Terry Funk, Chainsaw Charlie,
00:52:21when he comes out to Madison Square Garden, Kevin Dunn says, wow, you know, wait a minute,
00:52:25look at Kevin Dunn, his teeth go down to here, have you ever seen this fucking clown, he
00:52:31cuts his hair with a pencil sharpener and he's got the butt teeth down here, he makes
00:52:35half a million dollars a year or better these days, he can't have his fucking teeth fixed
00:52:39and then everybody who has ever worked there in the television crew, or like I was talking
00:52:44to one of their old directors the other day, works for TNA, people who have worked on the
00:52:47crew, he'll get on the headsets, he's in the truck, he's the producer and he's talking
00:52:52to the crew, he's eating like chips with the teeth, so anyway, he said, Terry Funk hasn't
00:53:01been here in 15 years, nobody's going to know, as soon as Terry comes out with the chainsaw
00:53:07and the fucking pantyhose on his head and starts doing that left kind of lopey walk
00:53:13around in a circle, Terry, Terry, they will tell Vince, well Vince, you can't let these
00:53:21guys get over WWF guys because WWF guys are the real stars, these guys from down south,
00:53:27you know, they've been on their TV, you know, a few people may know them, but they're not
00:53:31stars like we have, the first thing about an invasion angle is, if the United States
00:53:38was invaded by fucking Swaziland or Bogota, Columbia's, the fucking Bogota National Guard,
00:53:47is that, are we shaking? No, I mean if somebody's got nuclear weapons, they're going to hit
00:53:52the fucking button, we're thinking, oh shit, we've got to hit them first, that's an invasion,
00:53:56what would happen if H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds, the Martians land, the fucking spaceship
00:54:01opens and out pops Marvin the Martian with his cosmic ray gun, get your invaders over,
00:54:09they won't let, they think Vince wants to hear it, secretly deep down he does, nobody
00:54:14is as big as the WWF, the WWF stars, so we can't let these guys look like they're competitive
00:54:19or we can't let these guys beat WWF guys or we can't, blah, blah, blah, and it just feeds
00:54:23on itself, and having the whole McMahon family thing, the whole reason why this would work,
00:54:30the whole reason why that Hall and Nash and the NWO invading WCW actually is the only
00:54:36angle they ever did in the 13 years they owned the company that actually really did kick
00:54:40Vince's ass, is because people really believed, my God, here's fucking Razor and Diesel and
00:54:46they showed up and they're going to fuck with the WCW guys, we believe this, that's why
00:54:51that worked, and he wasn't bright enough to see that, 5 years later he gets the same thing
00:54:55handed to him double, because now he owns everything, he can use anything, any name,
00:55:00whatever, they blow it all off, and nobody is there telling him, Vince, what the fuck
00:55:04are you doing, they were probably telling him the reverse, well, we don't want those
00:55:08NWA guys, you know, nobody believes that fucking shit, you know, those guys now are WWF stars,
00:55:14you know them all over the world, hell, the McMahons owning everything, did more McMahon
00:55:22family blah blah, it should be a crime punishable by 3-5 years in the state penitentiary to
00:55:28let Shane or Stephanie on television, just because everybody knows, it's like George
00:55:33Goulas with money, everybody knows daddy said sell, everybody knows the reason they're on
00:55:38television is because they're Vince's kids, because they didn't do it on their own merits,
00:55:41I like Shane, not too sure about Stephanie, the way she's run through fucking talent over
00:55:46the last 10 years, running people crazy and driving them out of the business, but the
00:55:50point is, once that Shane owned one, and Stephanie owned one, and Vince had bought one, but now
00:55:55his family, and there's Linda out there, you know, what the fuck, it's WCW versus the WWF,
00:56:02we've been waiting for this for 20 fucking years, and this is what you give us, he hurt
00:56:07the fans feelings, and if you noticed, just like WCW business dropped off, the end of
00:56:1499 was it, and they lost 60 million in 2000, and then they were done, middle of 2001, WWF
00:56:23business dropped, they made the bonehead mistake of turning Steve Austin heel, yeah everybody
00:56:27wants to boo their fucking hero, and they botched that, and business dropped, and what
00:56:33was it, a year, year and a half before it started percolating back up again, I mean
00:56:37they were still making money, nobody's throwing any benefits for them, I'm just saying, you
00:56:41know. Why do you think that the biggest name talent wasn't brought aboard initially, shouldn't
00:56:48that first surge, when you do that invasion angle, and that first surge, shouldn't you
00:56:53hit hard first? Sure, it was money, see WCW was losing more money than everybody realizes,
00:57:00because I'm not going to say all these people, because I don't know, but when you had Flair,
00:57:06and Goldberg, and Sting, and Nash, all the top guys, most of them were not being paid
00:57:12by WCW, they were being paid by Turner Broadcasting, when WCW was sold, folded up, caught on fire,
00:57:19turned blue, dropped dead, whatever, it didn't matter to them, Turner Broadcasting still
00:57:24had to pay these people, so if Goldberg is going to make a half million dollars, or I'm
00:57:29sorry if I'm shorting you Goldberg, but whatever large amount of money, to sit at home and
00:57:36do nothing for a year, year and a half, why is he even going to take the same amount of
00:57:40money to go on the road and get beat up every weekend? He's not, but the thing is, it was
00:57:46penny wise and pound foolish, if you're going to buy this thing, and just fold it up, get
00:57:52rid of it, get rid of your competition, fine, just do that, don't take anybody, because
00:57:56look what he ended up with, we'll talk about these names in a minute, but my God, these
00:58:00guys, they were on 90 day outs, every 90 days he could say go away, don't do this anymore,
00:58:04didn't have to pay anybody anything, it was 75 grand a year, maybe 50 grand a year minimums,
00:58:09so he just went to the dollar store and bought him a bunch of wrestlers, most of them he
00:58:13didn't even want, he just figured well I bought the company, put them out of business, I don't
00:58:16want all these guys to be unemployed, these other guys making all this money, they can
00:58:19afford to be. If he wanted to do the biggest angle of all time, or if his creative team
00:58:28wanted to do the biggest angle of all time, they should have said okay, we bought WCW
00:58:33for what, somebody said 2 million, somebody said 4 million, I didn't write the check,
00:58:36don't know for sure, but ridiculous fire sale price, let's put it, we just spent 30 million
00:58:42dollars on a fucking restaurant in Times Square for fuck's sake, we spent 20 million dollars
00:58:48trying to sell people body building pay-per-views, you know we got 3 gay guys down at the Castro
00:58:54in San Francisco and a couple of fucking steroid manufacturers to watch a body building pay-per-view,
00:58:59we spent all this money on all these, the XFL, need I say more, they won't spend 5 million
00:59:06dollars to buy the fucking top talent and do the biggest angle of all time, give them
00:59:12an easy schedule, work with them a little bit, please, anyway. What do you think about
00:59:18the decision smashing the companies together instead of trying to operate 2 separate companies?
00:59:25Well with what they got, they had to smash it together, but of course that wasn't going
00:59:28to work and they should have known from the beginning, but there was nothing to fucking,
00:59:33there was nothing to sell really. Well you got the final nitro which is March 26th, okay.
00:59:41A date that will live in infamy. In scrutiny, because they wait until May. In scrutiny,
00:59:49I spent a week there one time in scrutiny. It's nice, you got to go on the off season
00:59:54though. May 28th is when they start the invasion angle. It's 2 months. Well yeah, because they
01:00:00hadn't figured out what the fuck they were going to do yet. That's what it was, they
01:00:03needed 2 months to plan it. Yeah, and they needed 2 months to plan that, I could have
01:00:07planned that on a good shit after a dinner at Taco Bell. But not only that, you've known
01:00:11for how long that you're going to buy the company, shouldn't you start to? I don't really
01:00:14know that they knew all that long they were going to buy the company, they just kind of
01:00:17ended up with it, but still, you know, fuck, you sent me this shit on Monday, it's Friday
01:00:21and I've got something better than they had. Not that fucking hard, it's not rocket surgery
01:00:26or brain science. The first WCW match presented to the WWE audience was Buff Bagwell vs. Booker
01:00:38T, Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson. What's going on here? I mean, had those guys ever worked
01:00:49together before, did it mean anything? The announce team had never worked together before,
01:00:53the two guys had never worked together before, I'm not knocking their ability, but it meant
01:00:59nothing, it wasn't Ric Flair vs. Sting on the last Nitro, at least they had the farewell
01:01:08match or whatever the fuck, but there wasn't an invasion. Plus, by the way, here's a WCW
01:01:14match, they all work for us now, we own them, we can tell them what to do and now we're
01:01:18going to have them here, they're trained monkeys and we're going to pull the strings. How
01:01:23threatening was that to the life in WWF as we know it? How would you handle the ECW?
01:01:29Oh, God. Let me say this, and by the way, I saw the ECW roster as of the time that they
01:01:36went out of business and I can certainly understand why. I don't even know who some of the people
01:01:41were, but look, ECW had a lot of my friends work there and had a lot of great talent go
01:01:49through there, and ECW at that time was a shell of its former self, which as big as
01:01:55it ever got, it was seen by one-tenth of as many people in this country and a minute fraction
01:02:01around the world as WWF and WCW, and having an ECW invasion of me would only muddy the
01:02:06water. They went out of business, cherry pick your key talent, give them jobs, give them
01:02:11positions one or the other, but to put ECW in there, if they hadn't have prolonged the
01:02:18agony of that, I knew when ECW started I was in Knoxville, running Smoky Mountain,
01:02:24and I would hear what was going on, and Brian Hildebrand, Mark Curtis, a dear friend, you
01:02:30know, had friends with Sin Tapes and et cetera, we'd watch, and I said, they're beating the
01:02:36fuck out of each other for real, they're falling off the fucking roof, they're setting each
01:02:39other, they're wrapping each other up in barbed wire, what the fuck are they doing up there?
01:02:43I knew it was not going to be good for the professional wrestling industry. I had no
01:02:47idea how right I was, in that even though ECW presented Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero,
01:02:55it's always forever known, get the tables, tables, chairs, ladders, fire extinguishers,
01:03:01lights out, crucifixions, barbed wire, broken glass, the rottens, boy they sure were too.
01:03:08This hardcore bullshit, where suddenly, you know, I like the business, as Dutch Mantel
01:03:13always says in his greatest line, I liked the business a lot better when the marks were
01:03:16out front in the seats. All of a sudden, guys are beating the fuck out of each other
01:03:21for real, in front of a bunch of people who know that everything they're doing is choreographed,
01:03:27and they're cheering it because they're really hurting each other. What kind of fucking psychology
01:03:32is that? And they're doing it for practically no money, and they're also doing it just for
01:03:40the sake of being on television so the people chant ECW. Why do the wrestlers in the ring
01:03:46want the people to chant the name of the promotion? It used to be, go Ricky, go, now
01:03:51it's ECW. Oh great, I just fractured my fucking sacroiliac, broke my fucking leg, and shoved
01:03:58a fucking wooden spike up my taint, and they're not chanting Jim, Jim, Jim, they're chanting
01:04:03ECW. Great. Fucking stupid. It hurt the fucking guys, it hurt the fucking business, it immuned
01:04:11and numbed the fans. You can't do an angle anymore, an injury angle, because they've
01:04:16seen these guys do everything but fucking be run through a razor blade factory. It hurt
01:04:21the business, it hurt our tools, the ability we had to get heat and draw. It numbed people
01:04:27and everything, it was fucking rotten. Closed ECW down, taken the four guys that I wanted
01:04:34to take, and hoped that everybody forgot about it, and maybe we could go back to some semblance
01:04:38of sanity where guys didn't have to kill themselves and cripple themselves and shorten
01:04:43their careers in front of people who knew that they were cooperating with each other
01:04:49to do it. And when you watch these really hardcore matches, you know the wrestler, right?
01:04:56I saw a bootleg DVD because I couldn't go to the movies in Louisville because many people
01:05:01know who I am there, I've been on TV there for 25 fucking years, and I was embarrassed
01:05:05because now people look at you like, oh, you're in that wrestling bag, take staple guns and
01:05:10staple dollar bills to each other's heads and cut each other with razor blades? What
01:05:13kind of fucking morons might they be? You want to appeal to 200 guys that ain't getting
01:05:19laid that night that are fucking sitting in a goddamn truck stop parking lot, or do you
01:05:23want to appeal to 10,000 people in a major coliseum because you're an athlete and a performer
01:05:27and you are doing something that most people are not good enough to do? I'm good enough
01:05:33to hit you in the head with a blunt instrument, and I bet you that you will bleed when I do
01:05:37it because I'll just hit you really hard. What talent did that fucking take? Now then
01:05:42when people pay to see that, do they really feel good about themselves when they go home?
01:05:47If they do, then they're the same type of people that fucking molest the cat and kick
01:05:50the dog. I don't want to be around those people. I want to be around the people who went to
01:05:55see a great performance by some talented athletes and some great talkers and some interesting
01:06:00personalities. I don't want to be around a fucking bunch of people that applauded
01:06:03when a guy took a staple gun and stapled a dollar bill to some other guy's fucking head.
01:06:07Much less, I would rather move next door to somebody on the federal sex registry, sex
01:06:13offender registry, than move next door to somebody in the wrestling business after seeing
01:06:18the wrestler broken down, drug addict, has no family, and fucking slices and dices himself
01:06:24to pieces on the fucking weekends for chicken feed. And oh, but there was a success story
01:06:29in the wrestler. One guy opened a used car lot in Phoenix. God damn, what a success story.
01:06:34At least I got something to look forward to in my old age. Fuck, it was embarrassing.
01:06:39Anyway, so go ahead.
01:06:39Quite a commentary on the business in that film, yeah. Well of course-
01:06:45This really is Sprite, by the way. Everybody that knows me-
01:06:48You hadn't gotten an endorsement from Sprite yet. You've been drinking that shit since
01:06:52I watched that fucking, what was it, the barbecue or something? Was it the smoking at the barbecue?
01:06:57Jim Hurd, God bless him. God rest his soul. I'd love to be able to say that for real,
01:07:01but he's not dead yet. I've got my fingers crossed. He got me on Sprite because it's
01:07:06caffeine free. And see, when I was spent six months on the WCW booking committee, working
01:07:12with Jim Hurd, I ended up being hospitalized with a fucking stomach problem because I was
01:07:17so stressed that I was overproducing stomach acid, which led to the symptoms of a heart
01:07:24attack. So I got me hooked up to the daggum thing and I thought I was having a heart attack
01:07:28and they said, prescription strength Zantac and stay away from stress. I said, I work
01:07:33for Jim Hurd. I can't do that. So I quit the booking committee. Was fine from there on.
01:07:39No caffeine, no Jim Hurd. I'm great.
01:07:48I can't whip anybody anymore. I'm broke down and crippled, but I figure he's got to be
01:07:53old. When he was in school, he didn't have history.
01:07:56How long is that list, your ass kicking list? It's a long list.
01:08:00I've shortened it up to old people, paraplegics and midgets these days because I'm getting
01:08:05older and I've had too many injuries.
01:08:06Have you taken anyone off the list? Has anyone graduated to maybe just the general disdain
01:08:11instead of an ass whipping?
01:08:12I still hate a lot of people. I just don't want to fight them anymore.
01:08:16Like Russo hasn't graduated to something else?
01:08:19Me and Vinnie Roo, we're fine now. Don't try to serve us.
01:08:22Has he graduated to a higher level?
01:08:25When we were in the WWF together, our ideas on what professional wrestling were, were
01:08:30so far apart that they actually almost went all the way around the world and met on the
01:08:34other side. But now, I follow that not taking it so seriously method anymore.
01:08:40Alrighty.
01:08:41And we speak now.
01:08:43Let's take that.
01:08:44Not about wrestling. We haven't gone that far.
01:08:49I'm going to give you the champions right now.
01:08:58Let me come up on your screen.
01:08:59The World Heavyweight Champion for WCW now.
01:09:01This is at the time of the invasion.
01:09:03Here's where the titles were.
01:09:05Booker T won it on the last Nitro.
01:09:07WCW US title was also Booker T.
01:09:10The tag team titles were Chuck Palumbo and Sean O'Hare.
01:09:14The cruiserweights was Shane Helms.
01:09:17Those are the four belts that WWFE kept.
01:09:21WWFU.
01:09:23WWFU.
01:09:24TV title was Doug and that went by the wayside.
01:09:27Kidman and Mysterio were the cruiserweight tags.
01:09:29That went by the wayside.
01:09:30And Meng was the hardcore champion.
01:09:32That went by the wayside.
01:09:33One, two, three, four, five, what is that?
01:09:35Seven championships.
01:09:36Yeah.
01:09:37So they were losing less than $10 million per championship per year.
01:09:43I'm not nagging the talent.
01:09:45Here's the thing.
01:09:46It is amazing.
01:09:48WCW had 20 stars and 20 real good talents and 40 fucking schlubs on the roster.
01:09:57But the problem is it wasn't the talent's fault.
01:10:02I know from being there in 89 and 90.
01:10:05I said at the time if Jim Hurt had Hulk Hogan he couldn't have drawn a house with him.
01:10:09Because they'd have figured out some way to fuck that up.
01:10:12Bischoff had an accidental epiphany of buying up recognized stars and doing an invasion angle.
01:10:18And it worked.
01:10:19And he didn't know how to follow it up.
01:10:21There's Bischoff right now.
01:10:22I'm not going to serve you with some kind of papers.
01:10:25And it's a shame because did Turner Broadcasting suffer?
01:10:30Did any executives get fired for mismanaging this company so badly that in 13 years they owned it,
01:10:35it only turned a profit two?
01:10:37No.
01:10:38They kept making their inflated salaries and all these fucking wrestlers were out of business.
01:10:43Even though they went in there and beat themselves up every night until some of them, frankly,
01:10:47decided it wasn't worth it and slacked off because nobody cared anyway when they did that.
01:10:52So why should they kill themselves?
01:10:53But you know what I'm saying.
01:10:54Mm-hmm.
01:10:55Let's go.
01:10:56Let's do it to it.
01:10:57The floor is yours, Jim.
01:10:59All right.
01:11:00Before we talk about rosters or anything.
01:11:01Here, to me, if anybody disagrees, please, I want them to, I encourage them to write, call, email,
01:11:09carrier pigeon, whatever, Sean here, because I don't want to hear it.
01:11:12No.
01:11:16They got to believe it.
01:11:17They have to believe it.
01:11:19If you are going to do an invasion angle, and in the days when wrestling, as we said,
01:11:23has been exposed and is viewed as just entertainment and in some cases not even that,
01:11:30if you want to really draw big money, if you want to know why Dana White and the UFC is kicking Vince's ass
01:11:35on pay-per-view, it's not only because it's real, but because it's wrestling.
01:11:40The UFC is professional wrestling without the predetermined endings.
01:11:44They have the grease.
01:11:46Referee's got oil on him.
01:11:48They have that one.
01:11:49They have the double knockout finish where they both hit each other at the same time.
01:11:53They both go down.
01:11:54The reason why these are old, trite, cliched wrestling finishes is because they legitimately at one time did happen
01:12:01or they legitimately could happen, but they've been done to death in wrestling by bookers and talent
01:12:07throughout the years who just couldn't come up with anything else and decided to just go with the same old shit,
01:12:13which happens to everybody, and it's even happened to me.
01:12:16But the UFC is professional wrestling with guys that aren't allowed to trash talk each other.
01:12:24The crowds for the UFC, when the underdogs make it a comeback, they sound like the old 70s wrestling crowds.
01:12:32Are you old enough to remember that?
01:12:33Were you just a gleam in your father's eye or a stain in your mother's panties?
01:12:42UFC and Dana White are kicking Vince's ass on pay-per-view because people want to see a fight
01:12:48between two people that they think are tough and that they are kind of interested in, either liking or disliking.
01:12:54So the first thing is if you're going to have an invasion, they have to believe it.
01:12:58Now, in the days of internet and exposés and et cetera, how do we make them believe something?
01:13:05Not all of it.
01:13:06They don't have to believe that everything's real.
01:13:08They just have to have a doubt, a smidgen of doubt, a suspension of disbelief.
01:13:14If Vince McMahon had come out on March 26, 2001, at the end of Raw,
01:13:21fuck Nitro, put a Mighty Mouse cartoon on that night.
01:13:25Actually, put on something that says, turn to fucking Raw.
01:13:28I don't know how they would have done it, but they just showed Raw.
01:13:31The last half hour of the show, Vince McMahon comes out, and he says,
01:13:37I have finally done it.
01:13:39After 17 years of fighting a war with those reprobates down south.
01:13:47Ted Turner, billionaire Ted, I squashed you like a bug.
01:13:52I own it all now.
01:13:54Me, Vince McMahon, I own wrestling.
01:13:57I have purchased WCW.
01:13:59Boo, hiss, whatever.
01:14:02Because Vince, for all anything else anybody can say about him,
01:14:05is one of the great heels of all time on television,
01:14:08and in person maybe sometimes too.
01:14:10I own wrestling.
01:14:12I squashed billionaire Ted.
01:14:14I have purchased WCW.
01:14:16I've purchased their assets, purchased their name,
01:14:19their intellectual property, and I've purchased their wrestlers.
01:14:21And now that I've gotten rid of you out of my hair, billionaire Ted,
01:14:25now that the WWF stands dominant as the greatest wrestling company
01:14:30on the face of the planet, everybody's got to be wondering
01:14:34what's going to happen to your favorite wrestlers.
01:14:36And I know that some of you WCW fans down south there,
01:14:42you know, because he condescended,
01:14:44he might as well go ahead and come out with it.
01:14:46He hates southern people, looks down at them,
01:14:48so let's go ahead and come out and say it.
01:14:50You're probably wondering what's going to happen to those wrestlers
01:14:53that you like, the wrestlers.
01:14:55And some of the WCW wrestlers,
01:14:58they're probably wondering, well, what's in my future?
01:15:01Well, the simple answer is you don't have any futures
01:15:05because I own you.
01:15:07I own you lock, stock, and barrel.
01:15:09And by the time I, because I know all of you WCW wrestlers,
01:15:13night in and night out you were out there on the road.
01:15:16You were appearing in those BFW halls, those bingo halls,
01:15:20and those parking lots, county fairs,
01:15:22and you were trying to put me out of business.
01:15:25I hold you just as responsible as I do billionaire Ted
01:15:29for trying to put the WWF out of business
01:15:31when we tried to bring entertainment to the families
01:15:34of the masses around the world.
01:15:37So since I hold you just as responsible as I do
01:15:41billionaire Ted, WCW wrestlers,
01:15:44I want to make sure you pay for that first.
01:15:46I own you for a year.
01:15:48I bought this company, I bought everybody's contracts
01:15:50for one year.
01:15:52And in that year you got your choice.
01:15:54You could either, you could go home,
01:15:56you can go home, you don't have to work for me,
01:15:58you don't have to put up with me.
01:15:59You breach your contracts.
01:16:01If you do, you don't get paid.
01:16:02And what's more than that, since I basically own wrestling,
01:16:06you'll never work again.
01:16:09Or you can stick around for the next year
01:16:12and you can get paid on those fat inflated contracts
01:16:15that those morons down in WCW assigned you to
01:16:18and know you're not worth it.
01:16:20But for that money, I promise you,
01:16:23you're going to roll over and play dead
01:16:26for everybody on my roster.
01:16:28We will beat you like a dusty rug at spring cleaning.
01:16:31We will make sure that by the time that year is up
01:16:35that nothing is left of your careers,
01:16:36that the fans would rather see Mickey Mouse
01:16:39than see any of you.
01:16:40They won't pay a dime to see you.
01:16:42That's going to be my revenge.
01:16:43That's how I'm going to get even.
01:16:45I've destroyed billionaire Ted,
01:16:47I've purchased WCW,
01:16:49and now I'm going to take his entire roster down with me.
01:16:52You know, blah, blah, blah, right?
01:16:54All of a sudden he's interrupted.
01:16:56Mr. McMahon, I'm so glad to hear you say that.
01:17:00It's Eric Bischoff walking out the entranceway.
01:17:03Mr. McMahon, because once again, Eric Bischoff,
01:17:06and see, that's the great thing about wrestling.
01:17:09When people are really pricks,
01:17:12you can just make them heels and they make money with it.
01:17:14Eric Bischoff comes out and he says,
01:17:17Mr. McMahon, I'm glad that you have realized
01:17:21what's been going on,
01:17:23and I'm glad that things have come to this.
01:17:25I'm glad that I don't have to work for that
01:17:28no-good Turner Broadcasting anymore,
01:17:31and I'm so glad that you've realized
01:17:34that it was the wrestlers' fault all along.
01:17:36I tried to run a good, wholesome, honest company,
01:17:39but it was those wrestlers, by the whiny wrestlers,
01:17:42always in it for themselves.
01:17:44I'm glad to see blames being put in the proper place.
01:17:47I just want to let you know, Mr. McMahon,
01:17:49I almost had you there once,
01:17:51but you got me, Vince, if I may.
01:17:53You got me, Vince, and I'll tell you,
01:17:55if there's anything I can do
01:17:57to help make this transition a little smoother,
01:17:59don't hesitate to call on me, Eric Bischoff.
01:18:01You can just call me Easy E.
01:18:03By the way, I'd just like to say that
01:18:06if you have any spots in middle management
01:18:09in the WWF for someone with some experience,
01:18:13I'm certainly open to discussing those.
01:18:15Just on your time, Mr. McMahon.
01:18:18On your time.
01:18:20Vince looks at him, and he don't know whether
01:18:22to wind his ass or scratch his watch,
01:18:24and he's starting to think about this
01:18:26when all of a sudden there's a big commotion.
01:18:29Up about halfway in one of the breezeways,
01:18:32into the arena, and all of a sudden,
01:18:34the fans are screaming.
01:18:36Here comes, everybody knows who this is,
01:18:38Ric Flair, down the steps,
01:18:42through the people, with the WCW wrestlers.
01:18:45Not all of them, you can't have 30 guys coming in,
01:18:47but names, I mean the people that people know.
01:18:51And Flair is hotter than a $2 pistol,
01:18:53and you can see it on his face,
01:18:54and he comes right down to ringside,
01:18:56and he goes to the announcer's desk,
01:18:57and he grabs a microphone,
01:18:58and they're taking over the area.
01:19:00And Vince says, no, no, no, let him speak.
01:19:02Because they're starting to go to break,
01:19:04or cut to black, or whatever, security coming.
01:19:06No, no, no, let him speak.
01:19:08Let's see what he's got to say for himself
01:19:09before he walks the freaking plank.
01:19:12And Flair says, Vince, you know, and Bischoff,
01:19:17by the way, you and me, you and me, Bischoff.
01:19:20Oh, I know, one of these days, it's gonna happen.
01:19:22Which it did, by the way.
01:19:25Vince, you think you got us, don't you?
01:19:28Well, let me tell you something.
01:19:29I haven't spent 25 years in this business,
01:19:31this profession of mine,
01:19:32I haven't spilled my blood and my sweat and my tears
01:19:36to go out there and be the 60-minute man
01:19:38to entertain these people.
01:19:39Every night of my life, I had more shower time
01:19:42than Hogan had wrestling time.
01:19:44Shoot with it.
01:19:46And I haven't done all that
01:19:48just for it to come to an end like this.
01:19:50Yeah, you bought us.
01:19:51You bought our contracts.
01:19:53But you didn't buy our self-respect.
01:19:55You didn't buy our souls.
01:19:57And there's some guys right here
01:19:58that aren't just gonna roll over and play dead.
01:20:00Now, you've got the contract.
01:20:02You've got the contracts.
01:20:03You can tell us where to go.
01:20:05You can tell us what time to be there.
01:20:07And you can tell us whether our hand goes up
01:20:10or our shoulders go down.
01:20:12That's legal.
01:20:14But what you can't tell us
01:20:17is how easy it is to get us there.
01:20:20You can't tell us every move to make,
01:20:23every foot to put in front of the other.
01:20:25You know, this is wrestling.
01:20:26What we do is not ballet.
01:20:28And if you want to put us in there
01:20:30with some of your superstars, as you call them,
01:20:35well, we may go down.
01:20:38But things may happen before we do.
01:20:40You know, this is a contact sport.
01:20:43People's eyes get busted open.
01:20:45People's teeth get knocked out.
01:20:47Sometimes a shoulder gets torn or a knee gets clipped.
01:20:50Sometimes people get hurt real bad.
01:20:55Well, are you willing to sacrifice or to risk
01:20:59all the money you've got tied up
01:21:01in all of those pampered pretty boys
01:21:03that you fly around and you buy limousines for
01:21:06while we've been busting our butts night in and night out,
01:21:10time in, time out, town in, town out,
01:21:13city to state to country for 20 years, some of us?
01:21:17Are you willing to risk all that money you've got tied up
01:21:20in your coddled little pretty boys
01:21:22on the thought that maybe, just maybe,
01:21:24it might not be as easy to get to that three count
01:21:27as you're thinking, what are you going to do, sue us?
01:21:29Are you going to take us to court
01:21:31because we beat somebody up in a professional wrestling match?
01:21:35Just a question, Vince.
01:21:37Just a question.
01:21:39Because you bought our contracts,
01:21:41but you didn't buy our souls, and we're still men.
01:21:45Just then, boom, comes the dynamite.
01:21:48No music on this, because music is...
01:21:51We're telling people...
01:21:53Have you noticed, by the way,
01:21:55when somebody's getting the shit kicked out of them,
01:21:58somebody comes to make a save, music hits,
01:22:00if I'm getting the shit kicked out of me
01:22:02and my friend's got to wait for his fucking entrance music
01:22:04to come and help me out, if I need friends like that,
01:22:06I don't need friends, I need enemas,
01:22:08or whatever the fuck the saying is.
01:22:10Here, out of the entranceway, where they should be,
01:22:13since they work there, comes the WWF wrestlers,
01:22:16led by Stone Cold Steve Austin,
01:22:19who looks, and now there's another roar from the crowd,
01:22:22and they stay on the stage.
01:22:24So you've got the WCW guys down on the floor around the ring,
01:22:26you've got Bischoff in the aisleway,
01:22:28you've got Vince in the ring,
01:22:30maybe Bischoff steps in the ring, who knows,
01:22:32you've got the WWF guys at the entranceway,
01:22:34and Austin says, wait just a damn minute.
01:22:37First of all, Bischoff, you little weasel,
01:22:40I remember you, you gutless prick,
01:22:42you fired me over the telephones.
01:22:44Fuck you.
01:22:46Vince, what are you trying to do?
01:22:48You're trying to play some kind of power trip,
01:22:51and you're using us as your little toys?
01:22:54Just because you've been, for the past 20 years,
01:22:57you've been comparing penis sizes with Ted Turner,
01:23:00and now you've finally figured out yours
01:23:02is just a little bit bigger than his is,
01:23:04and you've ended up with this whole thing?
01:23:06Now what you're going to do
01:23:08is you're going to put us in the ring with a bunch of guys
01:23:10that are going to try to hurt us,
01:23:12and you think we're just going to stand there wide open,
01:23:14with smiling, with our teeth ready to be knocked out,
01:23:17and our arms wide open, ready to be kicked in the balls?
01:23:20You've got to be out of your mind.
01:23:22I don't know what you think you're trying to pull here,
01:23:25and I don't know what Bischoff is trying to do,
01:23:27and Rick, Nate, I'll tell you what, I respect you.
01:23:30I don't respect everybody in that group of yours,
01:23:32but I respect you, but I'll be goddamned
01:23:35if any of us here in the WWF
01:23:38are just going to stand there and let shit like that go on.
01:23:42We've got families to feed.
01:23:44We've got wives. We've got kids.
01:23:46We've got bills to pay, and we don't need to be out of work.
01:23:49We don't need to be hurt just because you've got
01:23:51some kind of feud with somebody else going on.
01:23:53You're going to put us in a position like that.
01:23:56So as far as I'm concerned, Vince,
01:23:58if you want to fight Eric Bischoff,
01:24:00I'll sit down in the front row with some popcorn and watch it,
01:24:03but if you expect us to get in the ring
01:24:05with any of these pricks over here and get our asses kicked,
01:24:08then we're going to start kicking back and maybe even first.
01:24:11Now this shit's starting to fucking bubble up
01:24:13like a goddamned little cauldron, right?
01:24:16The people would believe that Vince McMahon
01:24:20is an executive who would make other people fight
01:24:23and suffer for his good.
01:24:26They would believe that Eric Bischoff is a weasel
01:24:29who wants to save himself at everybody else's expense
01:24:33and wants to save his job.
01:24:35They would believe that the WCW wrestlers
01:24:38who have been on the losing end of things
01:24:40all of a sudden now are saying,
01:24:42well, goddammit, we may have to do a job
01:24:44without coming out and actually saying that,
01:24:46but we don't have to do it easy,
01:24:48and somebody may get hurt and accidents do happen,
01:24:51and they would believe that then the WWF guys
01:24:53who it's their home field and they don't own the place,
01:24:57but they've gotten the place over
01:24:59and they're on the winning side,
01:25:00and all of a sudden they're being expected
01:25:02to get in the ring with a bunch of guys
01:25:03that ain't going to work with them,
01:25:05and the only one that isn't there,
01:25:07and this is where we make one concession to showbiz.
01:25:10The only guy that isn't in the WWF group is The Undertaker,
01:25:14because since it is actually the greatest gimmick
01:25:17in the history of the world,
01:25:18and nobody could ever have done this any better than Mark,
01:25:21the one guy that isn't there is The Undertaker,
01:25:23because right as Austin finishes that,
01:25:25and then Vince is starting to say something,
01:25:28and Eric's lip is trembling, and Flair's fucking hot
01:25:31and taking his tie off and throwing his jacket down,
01:25:33and everybody's ready to go.
01:25:35Boom!
01:25:37Blackout, lightning, big screen.
01:25:40It's The Undertaker,
01:25:41and I can't do The Undertaker's promo,
01:25:43but he would say something to the gist of,
01:25:46Vince McMahon, I know you,
01:25:49and I know what kind of person you are,
01:25:51and I know that you will make other people suffer
01:25:54for your own gain.
01:25:56Eric Bischoff, I don't know you, nor do I care to.
01:25:59I see two groups of people that are about to be at odds,
01:26:03and it don't look like there's an easy solution,
01:26:05and as far as I'm concerned,
01:26:07I'm on nobody's side, and I trust nobody,
01:26:09and when I get in the ring with anybody,
01:26:11from either side or both,
01:26:14I'm gonna make sure to protect myself at all times
01:26:17and do unto others before they do unto me.
01:26:20If anyone tries to take food away from my table,
01:26:25if anybody tries to take my livelihood,
01:26:28if anybody tries to take liberties with me,
01:26:31they will be dealt with from one side or the other.
01:26:34It makes no difference.
01:26:35I have no friends.
01:26:37May you all rest in peace.
01:26:40Long credits fucking rap, boom.
01:26:43Raw's off the air, and people are going,
01:26:45what the fuck is going on here?
01:26:49Say what you want.
01:26:50Those guys are mad.
01:26:52That's all it takes is doubt.
01:26:55They have to believe.
01:26:56Now they want to see what's gonna happen next week, right?
01:26:59So they tune in next week.
01:27:00You know what happens next week?
01:27:02Nothing.
01:27:03You know why?
01:27:04Because Vince McMahon is so fucking shook up
01:27:07by shit happening that he didn't count on
01:27:10that for the next two or three weeks at least,
01:27:14the announcement is made, ladies and gentlemen,
01:27:17Vince McMahon is rethinking his acquisition of WCW
01:27:21as far as the utilization of the talent that he has purchased,
01:27:25and will be having an announcement on Raw
01:27:27in the next couple of weeks.
01:27:29Don't miss an episode.
01:27:30We don't know when it's coming ourself.
01:27:32And WWF action goes along just as it's been going along,
01:27:36that's what everybody's asking.
01:27:37And for once, maybe somebody in that fucking office
01:27:40could keep a secret and not leak shit on the Internet.
01:27:44Because then finally, by the end of the month,
01:27:48the announcement is made on Monday night Raw,
01:27:50Vince comes out and says, ladies,
01:27:52and I'm not gonna go word for word of all these promos
01:27:55will be here fucking Friday or Christmas,
01:27:58but the gist becomes that it is probably not
01:28:03in the best interest of the wrestling profession
01:28:05at this point to integrate the two rosters,
01:28:09and therefore we have decided,
01:28:11since Vince has to pay all these motherfuckers now,
01:28:14as long as they don't breach their contracts,
01:28:16as long as they don't no-show or refuse to do a job
01:28:21or be convicted of a crime of moral turpitude
01:28:23or whatever, you know, fuck, he's gotta pay everybody.
01:28:27So now he's got all this shit going out
01:28:30and no way to really make any money off of it
01:28:32without having a mutiny.