Jim Cornette interview

[Loss]

Here's another one that's really good.

 

***

 

Wrestling Perspective: Why don't we start with what you were doing before Smoky Mountain and how it got started?

 

Jim Cornette: What was I doing before Smoky Mountain Wrestling? Actually, waiting for Smoky Mountain Wrestling (laughs). I've wanted to do this for a long time. At the time I left WCW, I decided to just sit back for a couple of months and not really do anything, which I did. Then we went over to Memphis for a couple of months and did the thing with the Fabs, but I was trying to get the ideas and the plan together for Smoky Mountain Wrestling. It's something that me and Bobby (Eaton) and Stan (Lane) had ridden up and down the roads at night. I booked the territory in the car with the Midnight Express through like 1994, just in my headback in '87 and '88. And son of a gun if a lot of stuff hasn't happened that I thought of then, to be honest with you.

 

WP: Kind of like a five-year plan.

 

JC: It's kind of amazing that we've been able to do pretty well as close to what I thought would be a great round of stuff for the first year and a half of a promotion. It's amazing we've been able to do that much that I actually considered before and with a lot of the same people. Not always, obviously. But anyway, that's kind of what I did. Stan and I just worked some independent shots during 1990, some fun. Various reasons for doing whatever I did. But I've been working on this from four months after I left WCW until I got started and that's all I'm doing now. I don't have time to do this, much less anything else.

 

WP: How did you get all the guys together?

 

JC: It wasn't really hard to find good talent because with the lack of different promotions around today, there were a lot of guys that were not working or not working anywhere regularly. Actually at the time we started, the best group of talent that you could possibly put together for a promotion, most of them were not affiliated with any promotion (laughs). It's just the way things got. Obviously, we didn't call Van Hammer. So we didn't have to worry about that. But there were a lot of good guys. There were several key positions that were easy to fill. There were a couple of key positions that were hard to fill. The problem with those is they're very hard to fill with any promotion these days. Everybody's talking about the lack of babyfaces in professional wrestling and there is a lack of babyfaces. The ones that are available, we've got practically all the good talent that's available that wants to work a territory. I mean just to be honest. Road Warrior Hawk, he doesn't want to work a territory, I don't think. Unless it was a big money type of deal and he's going back to WCW. But you know what I'm saying. For all intents and purposes, we've got a good block of the available talent.

 

Now there's some guys who are under contract to one of the two groups that I would love to get the chance to use because I could use them so much better than what they're being used. But even if you're used crummy in WCW, you're still making guaranteed money, so a lot of guys are willing to put up with it while it lasts. We called the guys up and said, "Look, this is what we want to do. We're going to start television. We're going to run with that for three or four months. We're going to start running some house shows on a limited basis and we're going to upgrade our schedule as soon as we possibly can." Basically, that's what we've done. That's one reason why we've been able to get guys to stick with us because we don't bullshit them. We don't lie to them and we don't tell them that they're coming in and be a main event guy and make this much money and then don't book them half the time and book them on the first match and pay them half. We tell them up front what we want to do to start out with and how much money they're going to make and we honor that. At the same time, in return for that, we haven't had anybody walk out on us, anybody hold us up for a lot of money, anybody really cause problems with the exception of Buddy Landell. He was more or less an experiment that failed. Just because Buddy will be Buddy.

 

WP: With his reputation, why take a chance with him?

 

JC: Because Buddy will reform (laughs). Buddy will reform about once or twice every six months and he called me and said, "I want to work somewhere." His parents live here in Knoxville, he's home here. I know what kind of talent he's got and how good a worker he is. I said, "Well jeez, let's give it a try." Actually, if I would have had Buddy for the last month I had him and not the first four, he would have been great because he started buckling down and trying to work. But at that point, he had already pissed several people off and had done some stuff. It was too late. But really for the most part, we don't have the guys that walk out on us in the middle of the thing and we don't have all the other problems that plague a lot of other places simply because we don't lie to anybody coming in. They have no legitimate gripe. If something doesn't take place we never told them was going to, we just said this is what we hoped to do and we're going to try our best. I think that's the way I always wanted to be told things and always wanted to be treated and if you do that, nobody's got a legitimate problem. I think we've had a lot of good guys and we've done as good a business as just about anybody could do under the circumstances of the way the business is today.

 

WP: You really carved out a niche for yourself. How long did you sit there and plan what area you were going to pick out? It was obvious that you were focused as opposed to a lot of promotions that start up and try to promote everywhere that will book them.

 

JC: The way that I thought of it is jeez, I was living in Charlotte. A lot of people must think Charlotte is halfway across the world from where I am now. It's only like 210 miles. My house in Charlotte to my house here in Morristown is like 216 miles. I just noticed the various places we'd gone in the past and worked and the response that you get from the fans tells you a lot about if a place likes wrestling or not. There was always tremendous response from the people in western Virginia and eastern Kentucky and western North Carolina. When you look at it on a map, the territory that we are promoting and attempting to spread into, which when I say spread I mean spread to the next TV market over, I'm not talking about taking over the country, but this area comprises some of the best cities in what was once four different territories. It was part of the old Southeastern, the Fullers and later, Continental; part of Jim Crockett's area; part of well, West Virginia hadn't had a territory in so long that it's not applicable. The last time was the early Seventies and eastern Kentucky is really part of Jerry Jarrett's territory when he had TV up in Lexington, although it's been a long time. It's just a conglomeration of different territories that used to exist and don't anymore. I'm like, "Boy, if we center here. It's a low cost of living area. There's towns that haven't seen live wrestling in a long time. The fans are really rabid. They're not smart fans by any stretch of the imagination, which is what you need to draw big money." You need people who aren't smartened up to the wrestling business.

 

Unfortunately, there's not hardly any pockets of that in the country left except maybe this one and a few places that haven't had wrestling in 20 years. I know people think differently and I've talked to (Dave) Meltzer about this and Wade (Keller) and I love what you guys do and you guys are dedicated to the wrestling business. Meltzer is. The newsletters are going to exist and I don't feel like you ought to think of them as a hated enemy and I would rather have my business talked about in a newsletter that goes to a target audience of 5,000 hardcore fans that are going to come anyway than exposed on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution like WCW did. That newspaper is thrown on the front door of people who don't care about wrestling or maybe are just casual wrestling fans, who might go once in a while and read stuff like that and say, "Ahh, it's all fixed," and they never go again. You need people who will at least believe in your product to draw the big houses because the hardcore fans are not numerous enough in the country to draw any one territory enough money to stay in business.

 

WP: Is this the only place you thought of?

 

JC: The other place that I think a wrestling promotion would make a go, and all things considered is not counting for the economy is obviously, the old Mid-South territory, Louisiana, Arkansas, part of Texas, Mississippi. Those were the most rabid wrestling fans I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean anywhere. But you have two down sides to that. Number one is you've got to live there and number two is there is not enough quality wrestlers living within a driveable distance to make a territory feasible starting from scratch because unless you bring a bunch of guys in and tell them, "Move here and we're running six days a week from the start." Your trans would be enormous or it would be a pain in the ass for the guys to get there. In Knoxville, we're 240 from Charlotte, it's 210 miles from Atlanta, 180 miles from Nashville and if you just take into account the number of good wrestlers living in those three places alone, we knew we had talent coming up the yin-yang and didn't have to fly anybody.

 

WP: On the flip side, doesn't most of your talent now live within a 30-mile radius?

 

JC: That's a year and a half later. Now guys are starting to move here. When we first started out, we did a TV taping and a couple of spot shows in a weekend and they didn't see us again for three weeks. Now we're running four days a week so it's more feasible. You couldn't ask a guy to move to work five times a month. But as our schedule has expanded, it's become easier for people to do that. Also, it opens up bringing guys in from New Jersey or Minneapolis or wherever they may live and say, "Okay, we can't trans you. But you can come down here and move here and we will give you enough dates to make it." It used to be some territories would say, "Yeah, move on down here. We'll use you." You move your family and you get there and you're booked eight times that month. I didn't want to do to that to anybody either.

 

WP: What type of wrestler are you going to make that offer to?

 

JC: You see there is no type of wrestler. If you're casting a movie, you need the bad guy, you need the good guy, you need the love interest, you need the best friend. You need all different types of characters and actors. If you're putting together a wrestling territory, you need all different types of wrestlers. Anybody that I see that I think, "Hey, I can do this with that guy or that guy's a good talent. Or hey, this is the type of guy we don't have right now." That's who I might make an offer to. If I see a guy that's a great talent, but I just for the life of me can't think what I can do with him now, why waste him? I'm not going to bring him in because later on when I have that idea, I can make some money with him.

 

WP: How did you find these guys?

 

JC: In our first year and a half, we've concentrated on talent that's known because that's another one of my pet peeves. Everybody says, "The new territories, the small territories, have to be a training ground for guys so they can go on to the big promotions." Why do I want to train a guy to go make somebody else money? I'm paying and I'm trying to draw money with him and he don't know what he's doing. But he's going to go on after learning here. That's not the only reason that I would bring somebody in. I wouldn't start somebody from scratch right now. If I was selling out and all the houses were drawing and everybody was making a ton of money, I'd say, "Okay, this kid's had 15 matches. He looks like a great prospect. We'll bring him in and stick him in the first match and let him learn something."

 

WP: Isn't that what happened with Bryan Clark?

 

JC: Well, no. Bryan Clark was more advanced than that. Bryan Clark at the stage he first went into WCW at the Clash, I wouldn't have touched him with a 10-foot pole. But then two years later, I saw him and said, "Son of a gun, he has a good attitude. He wants to learn." He had learned a lot. For a guy his size, he did some great stuff and I said, "Boy, here's a guy who's weird looking enough to be a disciple of Kevin Sullivan and still is credible enough in his own right to be a good middle card guy." That's the kind of guy you want to give experience to. You don't want to take a guy into your territory and train him from scratch. It's a bad position because where do they go? Right now in today's economic wrestling climate, they're going to have to go somewhere else. A guy like Chris Candido. He is fuckin' tremendous. He is going to be a really, really good talent. But he's been in the business three, four, five years. I wouldn't have taken him in his first match. That's one good thing about some of the independents where you just wrestle here and there. You can at least break in and get your feet wet and then somebody will notice you. I'd seen Candido from when I'd been up in Philly and I talked to him and we spent some time together and I knew he had never worked what I'd call a real actual territory, working steady every week and programs and angles with a TV show. But at the same time, he'd been in the ring long enough that he could hold himself up and you could teach him the things he needs to know. That's the kind of guy I'm looking for if I'm going to bring in somebody that nobody's ever heard of down here. I want to bring them into where they can get over with the people.

 

Then a lot of times, guys have become available from the other groups. You definitely want to bring them in if they fit you style. I had no second thoughts about bringing Tracey Smothers in. We worked with him. I knew how great he was. Just because he had been with WCW is not a plus. In fact, it was a minus because he had been a heel. But we brought him in the first week on TV as a babyface, where he ought to be, and just acted like he had never been any different other than an interview where we acknowledged he's done some things in his past that he didn't appreciate but now he's back in the right mode and we took off with it from there. I don't look for a guy just because he's got a name or he's worked for the WWF or the WCW. I look for a guy I've known, that I know is a good guy with a good attitude that will work hard and is a good worker and somebody who I have an idea about.

 

WP: Would an example be when there was talk of you bringing in Tony Atlas? While a lot of people were coming down on his working ability, he would fit what you had planned for him to a tee.

 

JC: Exactly. That's the thing. A lot of people knock Tony Atlas' work. Number one, he's a great interview. Number two, he looks fantastic and number three, he may not be at the height of his physical ability as far as dropkicks and flying head scissors anymore. But he's been in the business for 15 years and he knows how to do things you tell him to do. He knows how to get himself over and he knows how to relate to the fans. That's something that no matter how good an athlete is, that's something that takes years and experience to learn. If you're going to go with a guy in the main event spot, you can't go with a green guy cause he ain't going to get over with the people, no matter how good an athlete he is. He won't be able to talk to them and he won't be able to know to do the right things to have a money drawing match. When you take a guy to Atlanta, and I'm not talking about Atlas here. I'm talking about anybody that people say, "Aww, Jesus, he's a slug." When you take a guy and put him in a spot where it's obvious to him and everybody else that they really don't care if he's there or not, why is he going to go out and break his back? Some guys will because they have that inclination, like a Bobby Fulton, who's going to work hard in any situation. But a lot of guys, and you can't blame them, are going to go, "Well jeez, they told me this and they told me that and I'm here doing nothing and nobody cares I'm around so I'm going to save what's left of my physical well being for when I can really bust my ass and it will mean something to somebody."

 

WP: Has Smoky Mountain been a success in your mind at this point?

 

JC: You know, there's two ways to look at that. Is it where I wanted it to be a year and half later? No, we haven't gotten that far. But a year and a half ago, I didn't know how crummy the whole wrestling business was going to be.

 

WP: Would you have still done it?

 

JC: It still had to be done because I just think that there was too much of a void that needed to be filled not to try to fill it. It's been harder than I thought. Are we where I wanted to be a year and a half later? No. But given the state of the business and the way things have gone and the fact that today we're out drawing WCW and WWF shows that take place in our area just about. Well I should really just say WCW because the WWF doesn't even run here. I think with the TV ratings and house shows we have drawn and the stuff we have done in a time where everything was the shits, I think we've actually done better than anybody would have ever thought we could of. When you consider that WCW will come into the Knoxville Coliseum with the return of Ric Flair and Flair, Anderson and Sting versus the Hollywood Blondes and Windham in a six-man tag and Vader and Davey Boy Smith in a world title match and draw 400 people and we would run Morristown, Tennessee, at East High School a week later with Bullet Bob Armstrong in his sons' corner against the Heavenly Bodies and me and we'd have 250 more (laughs), we're doing something right in a very limited market. Five years ago, this stuff would have been selling out.

 

WP: What do you think needs improving and what are the promotion's strong points?

 

JC: Our strong point is definitely the content of our TV. It doesn't look like the WWF show, but at the same point, everyone I've talked to universally, whether they're in or out of the business, says, "Jesus Christ, you guys have got the best TV in wrestling." I think our talent has been a strong point and our live shows are always good. We just don't have stinky shows. Those are our strong points. The points that need to be fixed are partially beyond our control, but at least we know what they are. We need a couple more strong TV markets. The whole wrestling business, it's hard to get strong TV markets. We need that. Basically, we need to draw more fans (laughs).

 

WP: If I'm the General Manager of a television station, particularly given the state of the wrestling business and the falling numbers, with the exception of Monday Night Raw, how do you convince me to run Smoky Mountain in my market?

 

JC: I'm glad you asked that question because a lot of people say, "How do you convince people to run your show instead of WCW or WWF?" That ain't hard. I'm being serious. If they're going to run a wrestling show, they're more likely to run ours more than anyone else's. Just because we say, "Look, we not only are going to be coming into the area once a month with live events, we're going to advertise on your station when we do it. We have our wrestlers available for co-promotions with your kids club or anything they have that's going on with a particular station in the market. We've got our ratings in other markets to prove that people watch the show. We will be a more locally oriented program. We'll even tape television in your viewing area, which nobody else is doing in these markets." We're the only syndicated television program that tapes anywhere in east Tennessee. The only other one is the country dance thing they've got on the Nashville Network. The last time eastern Kentucky saw a taping was when the tube was being invented. But the problem is, number one, with the glut of syndicated programming going over to all the Fox stations because the networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have taken up so much time on their affiliates that all the syndicated programs, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Kung Fu: The Next Generation, Brady Bunch: Next Generation. Everything goes to the Fox station and they're jammed. Then you've got infomercials. The Pocket Fisherman, the Ronco Record Selector and the Goddamn Miracle Varnish Remover paying these stations $1,500, $2,000 a week just to run this infomercial. They get that money in hand, they don't have to do any work for it and they use it to buy Cheers. The only thing is all of the TV stations know, and some will admit it, they drive the viewers away in droves. You've got to get a Program Director or a Sales Manager that doesn't have to like wrestling, but has to not, not like wrestling and you've got to get one that says, "Hey, I want people to watch the station and we'll sell advertising and it will be a good local tie-in thing." Basically, that's how you do it.

 

WP: At the same time, do you have to live down the reputation WCW and the WWF had with these stations?

 

JC: It was harder at first because we were just going in saying this is what we're going to do. Now it's not as hard and they don't look at you so cross-eyed because now you're saying this is what we are doing in these other places.

 

WP: What is your average rating in your markets?

 

JC: It's hard to say. In Knoxville, the WWF show does a 2 rating and a 9 share, I think. We're on the same station. They're on from 10 to 11, we're on from 11 to 12. We do a 3 rating and a 12, 13 share. WCW here is on the CBS station Saturdays at noon and we do the same number they do. We're on the Fox station Sunday mornings at 11 o'clock. When WCW was up against us in the Tri-Cities, Johnson City, Briston, Kingsport, they were on the Fox station, we're on the NBC station. We did a 2 rating and a 10 share and they did hash marks. That was after we'd been on like six months. In the February book, we did a 4 rating and a 20 share and this was Sundays at 11 o'clock in the morning on the NBC station. The second place show did a 1 rating and a 7 share. So they've moved us to Saturdays at noon now on that station. They moved us two weeks before the May books and we tied for first place in the time slot after being there two weeks. Up in eastern Kentucky, we're number one in the time slot. We did a 3 rating and a 13 share against Saturday Night Live in Beckley, West Virginia. We're either the number one show in the time slot or close to it at all stations. We out rate every other wrestling program that's on in competition with us in any of our markets. At least that shows that there's interest there and the people that are going to watch wrestling are watching our show.

 

WP: What about camera cutbacks?

 

JC: It's real simple. When business went in the toilet for everybody back in April and May, we started taking in less money, as did everybody else. WCW's average house was like $4,500 in the month of May. Ours was a little bit less than that. But at the same token, we don't spend $40,000 on our house show. We were taking in less money and the TV production, which we've had a daggum good TV show for a long time, was one of our major expenses.We sat and looked at it and said, "Jesus Christ, we need to cut back on this until we work on some sponsorship deals that we're working on to help try to pay for part of the production costs." We found that we could save an incredible amount of money by going to a two-camera setup instead of the fou cameras and losing tbe slo-mo. Basically what we've done is go from four cameras to two cameras and we lost our slo-mo replay. Slo-mo isn't what sells tickets, although it does make a nicer looking show. We did several of those in December. We had to cancel one taping because we couldn't get the truck for the date that we needed so we just did it like this. Dave Meltzer called me and said, "Man, those last two weeks shows were some of the best I've seen so far." People are looking at what's in the daggum thing. The TV stations look at the production because they don't know anything about wrestling. When we're trying to sell a TV station, we sure show them one of the good shows.

 

WP: But in your mind it's like a handheld camera at a Steamboat-Flair match is still going to show they're working well.

 

JC: Yeah. We have one floor camera and one play-by-play camera With our four camera setup, we had two floor cameras, a play-by-play and one camera at the set. Now we have a floor camera one instead of two, a play-by-play camera and the set camera goes back and doubles as the floor camera. Basically it hasn't been cutdown that much. Not using that production truck we save a lot of money and like I said, we're working on some sponsorship deals and a couple of other things to augment our production costs and then we'll go back to the truck and try to strike a happy medium. That's basically the situation. It's all economics and when you can get something that's almost as good for about half of the money, the way that the whole business is these days, you do it for the short term and save the bucks.

 

WP: Why don't we shift gears a bit and talk about something Smoky Mountain is becoming known for: heavy blood and violence that you don't see in other promotions?

 

JC: (laughs) Everybody talks about heavy blood and gosh, let's see when was the last time, there may have been one or two little exceptions, but the Kevin Sullivan thing was the last time we had blood on television and that was at the March taping. Ricky Morton bled a couple of times last week at our house shows and Jimmy Del Rey did once. We don't have a lot of blood compared with what all the promotions used to. We have more than anybody does today. That's one of the things that makes people excited about a wrestling match and when it's called for. We don't have guys going out there going, "Okay, we've got to have a bunch of blood tonight." One of the hottest things we got going now is the Armstrongs against me and the Bodies. It doesn't need blood, or at least not at this point. The Dirty White Boy and Tracey Smothers had some blood because they were having some chain matches. How can you have a chain match without having blood? So it's whatever the situation calls for, but when was the last time WCW had a chain match? When was the last time the WWF had the Rage in the Cage? So we don't do it just for the sake of doing it. We do it because the people watching the match go, "Something's missing here." If it needs it, we have it. As far as heavy violence, Jesus Christ, it's professional wrestling and the people here in east Tennessee, they want to see somebody get hit over the head with a chair. They were brought up on Ron Wright for Christ sakes. In those days, they didn't use the blade. That was ridiculous because people could tell. They busted each other open. In Tennessee, it's a whole different thing 'cause who still draws a house in Memphis? Jackie Fargo. He's a legend. When you go around in Memphis and you ask people, professional wrestling, name four. They're going to say Jerry Lawler first, Jackie Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto and Jerry Jarrett. The average people, not the ones that go to the matches every week, but your average guy on the street.

 

We've gone to TV stations here in east Tennessee, we've gone to businesses. The names that they talk about, that people that haven't followed wrestling in a while, are Ron Wright, Whitey Caldwell, the Fullers and Bob Armstrong. When I went to get the handcuffs for our Rage in the Cage, these people never went to a wrestling match, but they said, "What's old Ron Wright doing?" Once you're over here and once you're a main event guy, they remember you forever. The one good thing is luckily enough in Tennessee, we can still drag these guys out. The Mongolian Stomper. Nobody thinks he's 57 years old. They think he's the meanest man in the world.

 

WP: And they still think Bob Armstrong can kick the crap out of him.

 

JC: And he can. That's the thing. Bob looks better than anybody. So the deal is with them brought up on that style of wrestling around here, you can't give them Marcus Bagwell cause they'll fart at him. These hillbillies will beat the fuck out of Marcus Bagwell. I'm not knocking Marcus but that's just the way it is. They can see better fights for free going out on Saturday night than they can by going to WCW matches. In eastern Kentucky for Christ sake, (laughs) Ron Wright has so much heat. He has a scrapbook with pictures of the airplane he had that they burned. They beat him back to the airport and burned his single-engine plane that he used to fly around. He's been stabbed with hawk bills and cut with knives and been shot at. These people are serious. If they don't see somebody get hit with a chair and busting them open with a chain and shit like that, they think, "Well fuck, these guys are all a bunch of pussies."

 

WP: On the other side, given the wrestlers' lifestyle, whatever that maybe, and hepatitis and AlDS, and whatever diseases can be transmitted through blood, do you think it's ethical to encourage it?

 

JC: If somebody says to me and I'll say this - and I'm not going to mention the guy's name -one guy, a part time guy, said to me, "In my job, I work with a law enforcement agency and I carry prisoners around and some of these guys are HIV positive and I can't do that." I said, "Hey, that's cool." I've got no problem with that at all. But for the most part, my God, I just don't see that it's that big a deal. Most of these guys have known each other for years.

 

WP: That might be the problem.

 

JC: (laughs) You know what I mean. Me and Bobby Fulton, for example. If Bobby Fulton was going to bleed on me, I'd be more worried about one of the fans coming up to me and sticking me with a daggum ice pick. Truthfully, nobody that's been here... well jeez, there are some things that you need to do to get the match over and it's not that big a worry. I'd be more worried about flying in an airplane. I'm terrified of flying, but sometimes you've got to do it.

 

WP: If a wrestler came up to you and said, "Look, I've got a thing about this. This really bothers me." Would you accept that? Would that affect how you would promote that person?

 

JC: No. If I thought that they were still a talent that could draw money in the territory, I'd keep them out of shit where they would bleed. Most of the guys are also my friends as well as working for us. So it's not like, "Hey, you do this or fuck off." That's worked to our detriment at times because people tell me I'm too nice. No, that wouldn't present a problem either. Like I say, if I was saying, "Okay, tonight you're going to have to screw three hookers unprotected." But if I said, "Tonight, you're going to have to get a little color." What the fuck, you could get hit with a truck too.

 

WP: The WWF likes to say they're family entertainment. Would you say the same? If you had a kid, would you let them watch Smoky Mountain?

 

JC: Yeah, this whole thing has been so blown up about family entertainment. The wrestling fans, and this used to be the case all over Memphis when I was growing up, you had kids there, toddlers, babies. One woman was having a daggum baby in Louisville and would not go to the hospital until she saw who won the main event. They brought the kids up bringing them to wrestling matches. They became wrestling fans. It was not only a thing to do each week, but it was a meeting place for all your friends, hangout at the matches and talk to so-and-so. Those people, when they grew up and had kids, then they brought their kids to the wrestling matches. You don't see animals being mutilated, you don't see graphic sex. You see someone get hit in the head with a chair and busted open. Well, Jesus Christ. They showed that movie on TBS, Bad Boys with Sean Penn. He takes fuckin' Coke cans, which is where I got the idea with Ricky Morton at Christmas time. He takes the Coke cans in the pillow case and bashes this guy's brains out. There's blood everywhere and it's fake blood. I always wanted to sit down with somebody at TBS programming and say, "You show boxing, right?" "Yeah." "The boxers bleed, right?" "Yeah." "Okay, that's real blood in a real sport, right?" "Yeah." "And you show it." "Yeah." "You show movies." "Yeah." "The movies, the actors get beat up and you've got fake blood." "Yeah." "So what's the fuckin' deal with wrestling? Some people think it's fake blood. That would be a movie. Some people think it's real blood and that would be a boxing match and they show both. What's the daggum deal? If somebody is going to watch a wrestling program and a child is going to turn to crime or become a pervert from something they saw on a wrestling show, then they don't have any parents. They've obviously got a miserable homelife or some type of chemical deficiency in the brain because that ain't going to do it.

 

WP: It seems like it's overstated. They're editing Bugs Bunny cartoons now.

 

JC: Yeah, everybody's too touchy. I watched the Road Runner and the fuckin' Wile E. Coyote (Genius) and I never thought about dropping anybody off a cliff. There's weird people. A lot of people are fucked in the head and a lot of people are going to get ideas from anything. Let's keep it to what common sense would tell me. If they were showing like gang rapes on television and some teenagers would be susceptible. "Yeah, let's go do that. That would be great." Well, okay, that's one thing. But if you're showing a wrestler getting hit over the head with a chair and bleeding and it's clear that the guy who did it is the bad guy and it shouldn't be that way, then what's the harm. We could go on forever with examples. To me, everybody's too touchy. We have violence because that's realistic and the basic premise of wrestling is that good must triumph over evil. But think of how many movies you see where they put the heat on that bad guy in the first hour and a half and boy the last 30 minutes, it's time for the hero to kick some ass. It's entertainment and the only thing different between wrestling and that movie is for wrestling to draw money, you have to make the people believe as much as possible that it's really taking place without any cooperation of the participants because they really have to get mad at that son of a gun and see him get his butt kicked. You have to have credible, believable stuff.

 

Let's put it this way. You have to be consistent. WCW had Ric Flair and the Ding Dongs. The WWF has Doink and Kimala and then they've got Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart I don't think we have any kind of shit like that, stuff that don't fit in. Our good guys are good guys who are athletes and our bad guys are no-good sons of a gun who try to fuck everybody around. They just do it in different ways. But you don't see anything on our program that's way out in left field and brings the level of credibility down. We don't have a lot of gimmicks. But when we do have a gimmick, it will stand out as a gimmick. Gimmicks have drawn a lot of money in wrestling, but they drew it at a time when most territories were filled with wrestlers and you had the gimmick and that made it all the more different. But now, when everybody is the man and this man and the other man instead of Bill, Bob and Joe, what's the use. Everybody's a gimmick. The gimmick would be having a real guy . Different stuff used in moderation draws money. When we really go all the way and have a daggum gimmick in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, it's going to be an outrageous son of a bitch. But at the same time, the commentators will say, "Okay, we know this guy's really not from Mars. That's pretty well accepted. The problem is he really thinks he's from Mars and that's what makes him dangerous because he's a fuckin' nut "

 

WP: Isn't that what you've got with Kevin Sullivan basically?

 

JC: With Kevin, he's still a real person. He's just a demented psychopath. The Frankenstein Monster in Los Angeles. That's still a well-remembered thing because they came out there and said, "Okay, Dr. Frankenstein built this guy in his fuckin' laboratory," and everybody goes, "Yeah okay, I'm going to lift up my pillow and the Tooth Fairy has left extra money tonight." If they had the Frankenstein Monster out there, this is just my opinion, and the announcers had gone, "Okay, we know this fuckin' guy ain't put together from dead bodies. But we don't know what the fuck the deal is with him to make him act like this. His manager, this mad scientist, seems to believe this shit and we don't know if he's trying to throw the other wrestlers off or trying to scare people or psyche them out. But he's one mean son of a bitch."

 

WP: That's what they did with the Moondogs originally.

 

JC: Exactly. Yeah, these guys are just fuckin' crazy. People love to see freaks and nuts. They do. But you can't insult people's intelligence by having the announcer, who is the host of your program, if I had Bob Caudle come out and say, "Okay, here's the Invisible Man." Automatically, everything he says is a lie.

 

WP: It (the invisible man ginmick) was done once.

 

JC: I know, but not in Smoky Mountain Wrestling. That's the whole thing. Keep your credibility. On the surface of it, most wrestling people are strange, unusual, bizarre or ridiculous. With Kevin Sullivan, instead of us saying he worships the Devil, he practices black magic.

 

WP: But that got over with him 10 years ago.

 

JC: But we can't do that over here or we'd have gotten kicked off TV. This is the Bible Belt for Christ sake. We can't even run high schools on Sunday. We didn't say that. What we said was, "This guy is demented, he's evil, he likes to control people's minds. He tries to get other people to do his dirty work." And that's believable. It's a whole lot more believable. Look at serial killers. They're the scariest things in the world because they're real. Are you more scared of Dracula or John Wayne Gacy? When you're talking about a babyface, to me, Jerry Lawler is one of the great baby faces because he's a real person, he's not a cartoon-looking Superman, Greek god. So people can identify with him. When he talked, he didn't do this wild, outrageous interview. He said what was on his mind.

 

Same thing with Tracey Smothers. He's a real life guy. People know that this guy is from Springfield, Tennessee. Boy, he's a big son of a gun, but he's not a Greek god. He's an average guy. He says what he means. He talks to people and he tries to tell the truth. He's a good athlete. When he gets in that ring, he gives his best. I don't want babyfaces where the fans look at them like cartoon characters and super heroes. I want babyfaces that people can relate to. When they're getting beat up, I want the people to go, "Oh jeez, I hope he don't get hurt." That's a babyface. With a heel, you don't want Dracula. You want the serial killer. You want the guy that people really believe is a mean, nasty son of a gun who's going to try to fuck their favorite around at every given point. Like I said, when we finally do some real outrageous gimmick, we will still make sure that people know, hey, we don't believe this guy's from Mars. But we're afraid that he thinks he is and this a dangerous son of a gun because he's a nut (laughs). The voodoo guy, right. If the voodoo guy had come out and fuckin' acted like, in Global Rasta the Voodomon. If he had come out and done all the shit and the announcers had said, "Well you know, voodoo is like a religion in certain countries, Jamaica, West Indies, and evidently he feels this quite strongly." That's great. But the voodoo guy comes out and shakes his fuckin' magic stick and the babyface doubles over, you've got two for the price of one. You killed your heel and your babyface.

 

WP: You should have told them something. You were standing right there.

 

JC: (laughs) I tried. I called Craig Johnson and Scott Hudson over and said, "Look guys. I know it's out of my hands and I know it's out of your hands. The people have to believe that the announcers are on the level and no matter what you do, you're not going to overcome what you've been told to say. If you came out and said 'Global Wrestling Federation. We're a brand new wrestling federation. We want your support. We're going to try to give you the best wrestlers and the best athletes. It's going to be an alternative to the other programming that you're seeing and in the months to come, we hope you'll get behind us and we'll grow with your support." I think it would have got over. But I said, "What you guys are having to say that we're the American office, the main office is in Barcelona, Spain. The world tag team champions are the English Barons or whatever they were and all this other stuff." I said, "People are automatically going to say that everything they say is a lie because that's bullshit. That's what you'll hear. Bullshit, click." People will say, "Bullshit," click, they turn to another channel. Bullshit click, bullshit, click.

 

WP: Do you think you learned how not to promote by working Global?

 

JC: No (laughs). I knew that shit already (laughs). We went down just four, five times to tape at the Sportatorium. I tried to tell Joe, "I don't know if they're going to buy this." "This is going to be great." Whatever. I like Joe Pedicino, but he tended to have too grand ideas for what people would believe, I think. That's the thing there. If we'd have started up Smoky Mountain Wrestling and said, "Smoky Mountain Wrestling is affiliated with Goddamn 14 different promotions around the world. We're going to be doing a pay-per-view in six months and we've got these champions coming in from all across America and dadada." Well, people would have gone, "Aww fuck." But we say, "Hey, Smoky Mountain Wrestling is bringing wrestling back to you, the fans, on a local level and we appreciate your support and you're going to see some hot action in the months to come. We're going to do our best to bring it to you at affordable, family prices." People said, "Well, they can do that." Everybody has to be world, galaxy, global, international, universal, fuckin' astronomical, milky way, galaxy. Fuck, it's ridiculous. Global, where are you running? Dallas. People see that stuff and they know when it's bullshit. But they can't say we're not Smoky Mountain Wrestling because we're all over these fuckin' mountains.

 

WP: Why don't we get a little into a new topic: the Stan Lane situation?

 

JC: I wasn't going to say anything except with his "Torch Talk" a few things had to be answered. You read the letter (that Comette wrote to Pro Wrestling Torch) and you know what they were. I don't want to say anything now to be honest with you. Just because Stan's a friend of mine. I've liked Stan and I've been with Stan for so long. Stan just changed his outlook on things and the whole thing stemmed from the fact that he just really didn't want to be in the business anymore. That just caused problems with me, who eats, sleeps and dreams it. I just didn't feel like, aww jeez, it's hard to say this without sounding like I'm trying to bury him and I'm not. But then by the same token, I was upset when I read the Torch thing. Not only did he try to babyface and say the reason was purely money, but he also in a backhanded way downgraded all the other guys in the territory who were working hard and, in some cases, outworking him. Stan's capable of a lot, but we weren't getting what he was capable of and that was just a whole bunch of other things. We were going to have to make a change so we might as well make a change.

 

WP: You get the feeling from reading what he said and you said that there was a good friendship there and it doesn't seem that's the case now. It seems very strained.

 

JC: You know, disappointment is more the thing. I'm trying to say this without having anybody look like a total jerk or without coming out and knocking anybody.

 

WP: He has his viewpoints and you have your viewpoints.

 

JC: Stan has been in the business long enough to know that shit goes up and shit goes down. Stan felt like he should make more money each year that he is in the business than the proceeding year or that he was going backwards. That just ain't going to happen in any profession. If you're running a plumbing company, the year of the flood, you're going to make a fortune fixing all the shit. The next year, you ain't going to make jack. But that don't mean you give up and start a daggum carpeting company. I was disappointed in Stan that if... Let's put it this way: If he'd have been running the thing and I'd have been working for him, because I love the business and he's a friend of mine, I'd have busted my butt and done whatever. I wouldn't have given him problems when I knew he already had problems. I just didn't get the same thing that I thought I would have given him when it was the other way around.

 

WP: Have you spoken with him since he left?

 

JC: Truthfully, I haven't. I'm not saying we never will. Probably we will later on at some point. It was just a disappointment to me because I could see what we could do and what was possible and if he had another job or something or another career that he was going directly into I could understand him saying, "I'm just not going to wrestle anymore." But as far as I know, he didn't. He's got things he wants to do, but he ain't doing them yet. Stan's an only child and so am I.

 

WP: Did you find it disappointing because it's pretty hard to find a worker with Stan's charisma? Did you feel you were losing an asset in that respect?

 

JC: He was a Heavenly Body. It's hard to find Heavenly Bodies. Stan definitely has a lot of charisma. He had name value. But you've got to look at it from okay, here's what I'm paying and here's what I'm getting. In a territory, you've got to have good matches. You have to have a guy willing to work. If Stan's girlfriend's plane was late, so was he. That's not the way to run a daggum business.

 

WP: Was there pressure on him to move to Tennessee?

 

JC: There wasn't any pressure on him, but I told him, and I still think this is a fair assessment, "Stan, you're renting a house in Charlotte. You don't own one." I offered to take the ring truck down and move his stuff to Knoxville. He would spend $200 a month minimum less on rent. He would save a hotel every night he was working so that was $40 minimum every night he worked. He would save food on the road and a ton of gas. So making the same amount of money, he would come out, what do you think, $1,000 a month ahead. I said, "Stan, Jesus Christ, we can't afford to pay you more than you're making now. You're already making more than anybody else. But you would come out further ahead if you would move." I mean it's not like we were asking him to move for six or eight shots a month. He knew he was figured in. He knew he would continue to be and would be on all the shows. But he just didn't want to move. The reason he didn't want to move was cause he knew that he didn't want to wrestle much longer and why move up here. This wasn't where he wanted to live forever. He's looking at it like that and it's a valid reason. But I'm also looking at a guy that wants more money to stay. I always worked the same whether I was in the Superdome or in Fort Polk, Louisiana. You've got to like doing it for one thing and if you're sick, yeah, or if you've got an injury or something, that's one thing. All things being equal, you work the same way cause you take pride in what you do. If the guy won't work that way for $200, but he will work that way for $400, I'd rather get the guy that will work. The whole thing was I didn't mind paying Stan more for what he was capable of doing, but I did mind paying him more for what he seemed like he was willing to do.

 

WP: How did Tommy Young play into this, if at all?

 

JC: (laughs) Not at all other than Tommy and Stan were Felix and Oscar, the Odd Couple, driving together. The thing is we had Tommy as a road agent. Tommy Young, I felt with all the years he's been in the business and what he knew about the business, was a valuable asset. But unfortunately, he couldn't referee anymore. We had him coming in as a road agent, a glorified term that WCW uses, which mainly meant that he handled the music, he carried finishes, he made sure that the show ran smooth, he did things that needed to be done to keep our live events running smoothly. But when you sit there and look at the payroll and I mean cold-hearted business once again, if Tommy Young wasn't there, it didn't harm the house. The referee and the people that are already there really could handle his job. Now on big shows, if he had lived in town, I would have used him. But it was hard on some of the spot shows to have an extra guy on the payroll. So I told him, "Tommy, for the time being, we really can't have you on all the shows. It's not worth your while to just drive up for Knoxville. I realize that." I would like to get him back in some capacity with us in some point just because of his experience. But until I can offer him enough to make it worth his while, I'm not going to insult him and say, "Hey, I'll give you $150 a week, go hang posters." But that left Stan having to make the trip by himself. Stan don't like to drive. Me, I don't like to fly. I'll drive 400 miles to avoid getting in a plane. Instantly, don't think a thing about it. But Stan don't like to drive. So that's one of the things that hastened him either wanting more money or to not work or whatever because he would have to make the trip by himself. When you think about it, like I said, I can leave here and be where I lived in Charlotte in three and a half hours. It's not like we were asking him to come from Key West. That's the way Tommy played into it indirectly.

 

WP: Have there been pay cuts due to attendance problems?

 

JC: Everybody is still making the same amount of money as their original deal when they came in. We don't go back on our word. If a guy started with us and we said, "Okay, we'll pay you $100." I'm just using that figure. Then he's still making $100 a night. But if a guy started two months ago and we said, "Look, we're adding guys to the card, trying to have more variety and we can't pay you anymore than x dollars," then he's on that deal. Nobody has had their money cut since their original arrangement whenever that may have been.

 

WP: Have they seen peaks at one point? Let's say the house did real well, did they get a boost in pay for that show or are they getting a flat rate per show?

 

JC: We have given guys bonuses on real big shows that they were instrumental in. A couple of times, I've given extra for TV matches that I thought were just tremendous. I've given guys extra money. Not a lot, to be honest with you because when you think about it, we've got the best guarantees of any small promotion in the country today. The money is there whether the house is $500 or $5,000. The guys don't complain because you can say, "Hey, when it averages out, you're still ahead." A lot of the babyfaces make a lot of gimmick money. You don't feel the pressure to bonus them for a big house when Jesus Christ, in addition to their payoff, they have made $600, $700, $800 because of that big house on gimmicks. Now the heels, then you would, but then also some of the babyfaces do give a percentage of their gimmick money to the heels that they're working with since they're part of the reason. It's not like this everything's all for myself mentality that the big promotions have because one of the reasons these guys were picked to be here is because they understand how the real wrestling business works. They understand they're not TV stars, not movie stars. They're wrestlers and I feel the same way about myself. They don't have contracts and I don't have a contract. They understand that the wrestling business is up and down. That's why a lot of them are here because they're smart to the business . It's not a deal like, "Well, I've made all this souvenir money and I'm not going to give anybody anything" or "I drew this house." If that's not the case with a guy then he's not going to fit in here. As you can see by Ric Flair not drawing any money, here's the greatest wrestler in the world, he ain't drawing a dime because the people don't care about who they're sticking him in with. It takes two to hip toss (laughs).

 

WP: On a brighter note, Bobby Eaton was in for a while. You hadn't worked with him in a few years.

 

JC: It was great. The only drawback, and Bobby felt bad about this, the first month that he was here, he was so sick most of the time, he could hardly breath. He had a real bad bronchitis thing and he kept apologizing every night. "I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything." Almost puking after the matches. I said, "Bobby, don't worry about it." They had some great matches and he was tremendous. You know, Bobby is the kind of guy that you won't find anybody in the wrestling business saying anything bad about Bobby. Bobby's the kind of guy who knows this year that you can make a million dollars and next year, you'll make $15,000. We treated him good, but you know what Bobby said, "Well, Goddamn it, whatever you give me, it's more than I'm making sitting at home watching TV." That's an attitude I always had. It's not just because I'm the one paying somebody now and all of a sudden I'm stingy. You've got to be realistic. He had a choice. He could sit home for three months and not make any money or he could come and work with us and have fun. He didn't get hurt. He could make some money to pay bills.

 

WP: When we spoke to him earlier this year, he legitimately felt bad that he had to leave you.

 

JC: Oh yeah, I felt bad too because we're such good friends. At least, there's a guy you know is always going to give you his best effort and be conscientious to do whatever he thinks will help the business. A lot of people don't understand it. This is another reason why a lot of guys that are here in the business are not younger guys but guys that have been around. A lot of people today that have jumped right into contracts or into one of the big organizations, they don't understand, hey, if you don't do everything you can to help whatever office that you're working for, if they don't succeed, there's going to be that fewer places for you to work for in the future.

 

WP: Is that almost Bobby's downfall that he's too easy going and willing to put his career aside if asked?

 

JC: No, the thing is that's their fault. If you don't make the best use of your talent, that's your fault. The Midnight Express did jobs for two years straight but we were still over because we were all good workers who knew how to do it. We still had the TV time to go out there and get ourselves over. We were still involved in angles that would catch people's attention. What they've done with Bobby and what they've done with a number of their really good workers is they've just thrown them out on TV to get beaten. Never give them time to talk, never put them in an angle that's interesting. That's the way you kill talent. Look at how many jobs Ric Flair has done for Christ sake. Anybody that's a good worker, you can beat them in the context of what you're doing with them as long as you give them the TV time to get back over, then there's no problem. Somebody's always going to get beat. If you misuse your talent, it's your own fault. Especially if you misuse as good a talent as Bobby Eaton. It's always been a part of the business. A lot of guys won't understand where you're going or what you're doing and sometimes you have to say, "Okay, there's five matches tonight and the heels are going over in three. So that means even though I'd rather not beat this guy, I got to beat him. But I'll do something for him next week on TV." The guys who say, "I ain't going to do that shit," then they get a bad reputation. Then again, if there's a reason, if you're just being misused and abused, then it's time to go somewhere else cause you're obviously not figured in. Now there's no place left to go so you've got to do it.

 

WP: If you jump back a few years, there was a big stink about Sting not doing a job for Terry Funk. How would you portray that since Sting knew he was being pushed to the moon compared to everyone else in the promotion?

 

JC: Truthfully, I was there and I don't remember, and I'm not saying this didn't happen, but I don't even remember anyone in the dressing room making a flap that Sting wouldn't do a job for him. Maybe the boys didn't know it until they read it in the sheets, which happens lot. For anybody not to put Terry Funk over is crazy.

 

WP: Could it be that Terry, as good as he is, from a physical standpoint didn't look credible compared to a Sting or a lot of the muscleheads that were there?

 

JC: I, me, myself, I wouldn't do a job for daggum Van Hammer just because he's the shits and nobody cares about him anyway. But I would let fuckin' Mongolian Stomper beat me all day long because he's over. The guys in the business today have forgotten that it's not what you look like, it's whether the people believe in you or not. When Bob Armstrong gets in the ring, people don't see a 53 or whatever year old guy who hasn't wrestled regularly in a number of years. They see a legend, a guy they remember seeing beat everybody from soup to nuts and the guy's in tremendous shape and could whip three quarters of the guys in this territory in a shoot. At the same time when they see Big Sky, seven feet tall, 350 pounds and can't stick his thumb in his ass, they fart. It's not what you look like, it's whether the people believe in you and whether the stuff that you do looks credible. I tell you what. Terry Funk can stick Sting's head up his ass any day of the week if he wanted to. But we've gotten away from that. "I can't do a job for that guy, his arms aren't as big as mine." Well fuck, how big was Bruce Lee? You can go too far. I mean I wouldn't advocate bringing Cowboy Lang back and have him beat Harley Race, for Christ sake.

 

WP: Would you do it with the Lightning Kid?

 

JC: That's something else. God almighty, oh fuck, oh Pete. I met the Lightning Kid a couple of times and I think he's a great guy and I think he does some outrageous stuff. When I heard they put him over Ted DiBiase, I cried. Damien Demento, that's one of those points where we're stretching credibility just a tad bit too far. My thing with Lightning Kid is the underdog deal. When he beat Razor Ramon, I thought that was tremendous. When Razor Ramon pounded the piss out of him and he ran off with the money, I thought that was great. But remember what happened, and this is not the same as, with the Mulkeys. They were over like a million dollars. They won a match and nobody gave a shit after that. They lost their mystique. If you've got an underdog, the whole point is he knows that he can't beat these guys but he won't quit trying. Then you give him a win every so great often and of course, he can go on TV and beat Mike Samson. But he can't beat a star. But he can give them their best. That's what we're doing with White Boy and Bobby Blaze right now. Bobby Blaze basically fucked up and got a win over the Dirty White Boy. It was a sheer fuckup and it will never happen again in 100 years. But White Boy was so upset that he said, "I want this fuckin' little kid back in the ring." Bobby Blaze says, "You know what, that was a daggum fluke. I couldn't beat him again if I tried 100 times. But I tell you what. it felt awful good to me to do it. I got my brains kicked out, but I beat the Dirty White Boy. The reason I did it was because Dirty White Boy looked at me like I was a joke. When I looked at him, I looked at him like he was a great champion. He made a mistake and I was lucky enough to come out on top. White Boy, if you want to wrestle me again, then I'll wrestle you. I know I can't beat you, but I'll never quit trying." How many people are going to identify with that? They're going to say, "That fuckin' kid, he's got some guts. He knows the guy's going to kick his ass, but he's man enough to say, 'Well, I'll fight you anyway.'" So we had the match around and nobody got the stipulations on this right in any of the sheets. The deal is White Boy said, "I will wrestle you every time I get the chance to and if I beat you, it don't count. I can pin you 100 times. I'm going to beat on you until you say you've had enough of me and you leave the ring and admit you can't handle me. But if you beat me once, you win." So White Boy beats him three, four or five times in the course of the match, keeps right on going, pounds the shit out of him. He gets a little bit of a comeback at the end just to get the people to blow. The biggest pop you'll hear of the night is when White Boy has beat this guy to the point to where there's total silence. People are sick to death of it and then he's standing there and Blaze comes up and hits him right in the nuts. The place blows. It's the biggest pop of the night and he dives off the top and White Boy moves and White Boy gets on him and pounds the crap out of him and the referee finally says, "Fuck it, ring the bell. Blaze can't continue. Dirty White Boy is the winner." They drag Blaze out and cart him off and White Boy is mad because he won the match. That way, the people say, "That White Boy can kill somebody. But boy, that daggum Bobby Blaze, he wouldn't quit trying. What a kid." You have an underdog and he starts winning every week, he ain't an underdog anymore. With the Lightning Kid thing, I think they're giving him too many wins. He ought to be getting his ass kicked and the people will say, "Goddamn that Kid can do great stuff. But he ain't no bigger around than a daggum fence post so he's getting his ass kicked, but he won't quit trying ." (laughs) An underdog with a better than 50 percent won-loss record ain't exactly an underdog.

 

There are NBA teams that don't do as well as the Kid's doing. That's what I think the difference is. But we're going for more hardcore credibility than they are so it works in their thing, but, I could use him for a toothpick. They admire guts around here, but if you go too far with it, it's the same thing with a pretty boy. He might appeal to some of the women, but he'll have instant heat with the guys cause they'll say, "Fuck, he blow dries his hair." (laughs) In California, everybody's got to look like a movie star because they see them on the street. Here in Tennessee, it's different. That's why the difference is you appeal to different people in different places. The Lightning Kid, everybody says, "The promoters have a size fetish." Look at the people we've used. I don't have any size fetish. Tennessee's always been a place for smaller guys to work. Chris Candido is a smaller guy, but his height matches his weight. Look at Bobby Fulton. Tim Horner ain't that big. We don't have a lot of big guys. We don't have guys that are seven feet tall and 100 pounds and we don't have guys that are five feet tall and 400 pounds. Perception is a lot. I don't put a lot of stock in perception as most people do in this business as far as the guy's got to be big and have a great body. The guy's just got to look like whatever it is he's supposed to be doing. So anyway, that's that (laughs).

 

WP: What's the situation with the NWA and trying to get NWA matches with the NWA champion?

 

JC: I just talked to Dennis Coralluzzo and he's stirring up some shit and Dennis is good at that. I love Dennis. I guess we can join the NWA, it just hasn't been a point that it would be real useful for us so far so we haven't done it.

 

WP: There have been rumors that you've been trying to join.

 

JC: No. We had talked about it and I said, "Yeah, we may do that just to piss somebody off." The thing is any wrestling promotion that is a regular viable promotion can join. They can't turn you down. It's not a matter of trying to join. It's a matter of if you decide to do it.

 

WP: Big deal. WCW can say that's the end of the NWA belt.

 

JC: No, they can't say that They can say that's the end of us using the NWA belt. As long as there are members of the NWA, they can't say that's the end of the NWA belt.

 

WP: So it 's something that 's never going to go away?

 

JC: Basically (laughs). As long as there are members of the NWA who are not affiliated with WCW, there will always be an NWA title. WCW can drop their recognition of it and not use it, but there would still be an NWA to name a champion and continue on with the name.

 

WP: Do you see that as a viable option if you, Coralluzzo and Gilbert got moving? To have a world champion coming in to do occasional shots.

 

JC: Yeah and the problem I see is when the NWA champion had 20 territories to work in, it was great. But now, you'd be hard pressed to find the guy to put the belt on to come to Smoky Mountain, WWA and ECW. As more territories eventually spring up and they will, but who knows how long it will take. The idea of an affiliation and a touring world champion is the best one. It's a matter of you don't want the world champion all the time, so you've got to have a bunch of places for him to go.

 

WP: I don't want to get you started on WCW. But briefly, what's your opinion of how they're doing in 50 words or less?

 

JC: (laughs) Aww Christ. I can't figure it out any more. It's the daggumist thing I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't sit down and think of shit to do that was bad on purpose. I'm flabbergasted. For once, I'm at a loss for words because before it was bad. Now, it's ridiculous. They've got some of the most talented minds I've ever seen thinking of that shit to do because there's no way that a dumb shit could think of anyway to fuck something up as good and as quickly and as regularly as they're doing it. It has to be some on purpose effort (laughs). Where do you even begin? Eric Bischoff for Christ sake. Putting him in charge of anything related to wrestling. Let me go out and find the guy working down at the Jiffy Lube and he'll certainly have some good ideas.

 

WP: Will he have a smile like Eric's?

 

JC: (laughs) I mean the whole thing's just ludicrous. I'm not surprised at anything. The mini-movie and the mass taping, they've finally convinced me there's almost no way to be surprised at whatever they do.

 

WP: If you had total control, would you go back and run WCW?

 

JC: Total control, but TBS still owned it? No, no, no, no, no, no. They'll always find a way to fuck it up. As long as TBS owns the thing, it's doomed. It's just a matter of who's running it as to how quick it's going to go downhill. If all of a sudden they said, "Okay, we're going to take everything to do with the wrestling promotion and stick it in a building on Peachtree Street and have somebody run it and let us know at the end of the month what's happening and we're not even going to act like we own the thing," that's the only way that they will ever, ever do anything with it ever. They would just have to completely set it off to the side somewhere and have one guy run it and have him make all the decisions as far as who was hired and just deliver the tapes to TBS once a week.

 

WP: If Watts was allowed to do that, would it have worked?

 

JC: Yes. If they had left Bill alone and if they had him do exactly what I said. Take it away somewhere, not have to use the Turner program services to syndicate TV, not have to use Turner Home Entertainment. Just like it was under Crockett where they came down and did the TV once a week and that was it. Then Watts could have done a great job with it. But as long as TBS owns it and controls it and fucks with it and sticks their nose into it and hires people based on whether their hair looks good, and hires people based on whether they're screwing some girl from Turner Home Entertainment, all of which has happened and continues to, there's no chance.

 

WP: I guess you don't want to be working with Ole?

 

JC: (laughs) You think Ole Anderson would be doing that shit if he had any kind of control? Fuck no.

 

WP: He's done it before, go back to '83.

 

JC: Never this bad. Mini-movies. Did he do any of that shit? Did he do taping four months in advance? What they're doing is all of them are taking their money and doing shit that they know is the shits because they can make more money there doing that shit than they can make anywhere else. I don't want the money that bad to do shitty stuff.

[Happ Hazzard]

Cornette debuted in the WWF exactly 5 days after this interview.