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Trivia / Jim Cornette

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  • Career Resurrection: A relic from the 1980s whose career was seemingly in its last days. Then came Wrath of the Racket, which gave him another nine years. His following on the internet extended this further.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Jim Cornette helped stabilize ROH long enough to get it purchased Sinclair Broadcast Group, but ultimately is considered one of the worst bookers in ROH historynote  and has negative view of his work there as well; as Cornette came into the company once it had been gutted beyond salvation and had very little talent to work with and other interference he had to deal with from the other top level employees at Ring of Honor.
    • While "backlash" is perhaps too hard in this case, Cornette will correct anyone who calls him "the greatest wrestling manager of all time". That position is reserved for Bobby Heenan in Cornette's mind. He's fine with "greatest living manager" though.
    • Jim absolutely hates what has happened to the triple threat match, calling it the worst idea he's ever had. Specifically, he hates how overused it is in modern wrestling. Although he was not the first to do it (according to Cornette, one was done in Texas in the 1960s), he did popularize triple threat matches when Jim Ross saw one in SMW and brought it to the WWF.
    • Cornette actually apologized to Sean Waltman for this promo when Waltman returned to the WWF as X-Pac, stating that while he hates the Clique as a group he never had a problem with Waltman personally and just made him guilty by associationnote . Cornette noted on a podcast that Waltman was the only person he’s ever apologized to for cutting a promo on them.
    • Jim's never been the biggest fan of Chikara's product, but he did at one point state that he respected the wrestlers as professionals, enough to have a six man tag at an ROH TV taping for cross promotion purposes...the Chikara team unfortunately didn't bring their A game, leading to lots of stalling, joke spots that didn't really work, what he referred to as a "three-minute grab-ass comedy spot" and a missed time cue that lead to the match going four minutes too long...Cornette's never really gotten over it.
    • His earlier podcasts, which were co-hosted by Alice Radley, have earned his ire whenever he refers to them. He's even stated that they can't be edited for historical reasons, but he understands why his fans complain about Alice as co-host.
    • He's gone on to say that booking Prince Kharis — a "3000 year old mummy wrestler" — in SMW was one of his biggest regrets running that promotion, even if it was mostly at the behest of the investors.
  • Doing It for the Art:
    • He had doubts about how successful LPWA would be, but wanted to help it to show people women's wrestling was something that could be taken seriously after GLOW treated it like a joke on broadcast television.
    • He took a pay cut to work for Billy Corgan's NWA, despite disliking travel, because good or bad he was too interested in seeing another studio wrestling show to say no.
    • Behind the curtain, Cornette lives and breathes the industry. For instance he was very upset with John Laurinaitis when he started throwing his weight around the developmental program he was running because he had it so well oiled and organized. It didn't matter WWE was giving his promotion someone big to lean on, he just wanted to run it his way so he could put on a high quality show and he wasn't afraid to let management know it.
    • One of his fundamental differences with Vince Russo is that Russo has no respect for the business often saying it's "Just wrestling". Cornette cut a scathing promo on the "Brawl For All" episode on Russo where he passionately points out that wrestling is his life's work, and that he's never cashed a paycheck in his life that didn't come from wrestling. To wit, his first job was as a ringside photographer when he was 15, from there he became a manager, promoter, booker, and now has one of the most downloaded pro wrestling podcasts in the world. He also frequently makes appearances at fan conventions and reunion shows, and runs a successful merchandising business out of his office.
  • Flip-Flop of God: Cornette will alternately take credit for the Three Way Match (aka Triple Threat or Triangle Match) or give it to Paul Heyman. The correct response? "One of us did it, the other one ripped it off, and now everyone does it." On the Timeline - 1997 DVD, he said the equivalent of, "I'm not sure who of us did it first, all I know for sure is that someone else did one before us." note 
  • Follow the Leader
    • Had a hand in creating the "star system" used by Norman Dooley and picked up by The Wrestling Observer Newsletter and several others. 0 is a dud, 2 is average, 5 cannot be improved upon. It was originally based on TV Guide's four star system for movies, because like film there are no "perfect" pro wrestling matches but Jerry Lawler and Terry Funk had one four just wasn't enough.
    • The aforementioned triple threat/three way dance discussion.
    • 1990s WWF had an increasingly similar setup to Smokey Mountain Wrestling for Raw...which isn't too surprising considering how much they also took from ECW.
  • On-Set Injury: Despite a fear of heights, he agreed to wrestle a scaffold match and take a 20 foot drop from said scaffold. Unfortunately, the wrestler assigned to catch him (Big Bubba Rogers) misjudged his position, and Cornette suffered severe knee injuries upon hitting the ground.
  • Playing Against Type: Who would have thought someone who portrayed a sissy for decades would turn out to be such a hothead?
  • Promoted Fanboy: It almost goes without saying, but Cornette was a huge wrestling fan from the time he first saw Dick the Bruiser's territory on television. It took him a bit to convince his mom to start taking him to actual matches, but Cornette became inseparable from the wrestling business from that point on. He wrote fan newsletters, sold merchandise and filled in as a ring announcer for the Memphis territory, and attended early wrestling fan conventions. After several years doing various odd jobs in the Memphis territory, Jerry Jarrett decided to use Cornette as a manager, and the rest is history.
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Resigned (and likely would have been fired if he hadn't) from his job as commentator for NWA's Power for making a joke with racial undertones during a match.note 
  • What Could Have Been
    • While working in WCW on their booking committee, Jim pitched for him to move from managing the The Midnight Express to commentary, while the Express would join Ric Flair and Arn Anderson as a new incarnation of The Four Horsemen. The angle was initially approved, but nixed a few weeks later by WCW President Jim Herd, who had a personal dislike of the Express.
    • He tried to sign a young indy star he likened to Barry Windham to Ring of Honor around 2010, but was unable to due to issues the company was having. Seven years later, he found out that the man he wanted to sign was now none other than Scott Dawson, one half of Cornette's favourite act, The Revival.
    • Cornette has stated that he was burnt out on booking when he left OVW and essentially told Dutch Mantel and Jeff Jarrett that he would help out in TNA but not book. Cornette later noted on a podcast that he would have agreed to book TNA if Mantel and Jarrett had warned him the alternative was hiring Russo back.

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