The Jim Cornette Experience

[BigBadMick]

I've listened to Cornette's commentary on Michaels-Vader (SummerSlam 96) and Bret-Austin (WM 13).

If he spent all his time doing these and not bothering with all the bullshit, I'd be happy enough.

[flyonthewall2983]

 

[BigBadMick]

I've listened to Cornette review the Biography shows on Michaels and Warrior. That's exactly the type of talk I want from him.

[SomethingSavage]

Yeah. His review of the Savage episode was pretty great, too.

[sek69]

Have to give Jim credit when it's due, he pretty much nailed it on the Dark Side episode re: Warrior. He couldn't work or talk but he had a body that looked like a million bucks and had the greatest promoter ever pushing him and that was pretty much all there was to it. 

[dawho5]

One thing I've noticed when listening to Cornette talk on his podcast is that a part of what made him great as a manager (the insulting witticisms) can come off as really, really insensitive or even bigoted when not being said by a heel character in a wrestling promotion.  Which makes me think that it is extremely likely the man has always had some attitudes and beliefs that I disagree with.  Somehow the context they were being presented in made them less likely to offend due to the fact they were coming from a guy you were supposed to want to see get his ass kicked.

That being said, his opinion of modern wrestling and mine tend to align.  I think he goes a little far bemoaning the evils of it, but it's coming from a place I can agree with.  In general, when he talks about wrestling and the presentation of it (not the people involved that he doesn't like) he comes across as a super intelligent guy who gets what it's all about.

[Coffey]

On 5/31/2021 at 2:19 AM, dawho5 said:

That being said, his opinion of modern wrestling and mine tend to align.  I think he goes a little far bemoaning the evils of it, but it's coming from a place I can agree with.  In general, when he talks about wrestling and the presentation of it (not the people involved that he doesn't like) he comes across as a super intelligent guy who gets what it's all about.

I usually tend to agree with his stance on current wrestling as well. At least as far as AEW is concerned. But, when we do disagree, we're miles apart. Like he won't even give the women a chance & I often find them the best part of the show. The last PPV, he thought Cody Vs. Ogogo was the match of the night, I found it completely unremarkable & the build to it as very lame.

[NintendoLogic]

The problem is that when his preferences and his prejudices collide, the latter invariably win out. He seems pathologically incapable of giving "girl's wrestling" a fair shake, so he usually ends up skipping Serena Deeb's matches when he watches AEW even though she's probably the best worker in the company at the style of wrestling he says he likes.

[sek69]

2 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

The problem is that when his preferences and his prejudices collide, the latter invariably win out. He seems pathologically incapable of giving "girl's wrestling" a fair shake, so he usually ends up skipping Serena Deeb's matches when he watches AEW even though she's probably the best worker in the company at the style of wrestling he says he likes.

Her match on the PPV pre show was one of the best women's matches of the year, maybe *the* best,  and it was worked 100% the way Jim would like a match to be worked. He'll never watch a second of it because it involved Riho who he hates because of her connection to Omega. 

[Big Pete]

Jim is actually a fan of Serena Deeb but his dislike of Riho outweighs his desire to watch their match, especially after sitting through four hours of a show he largely disliked.

Cody/Ogogo was his match of the night because it was the least offensive match on the card.

[SomethingSavage]

I know it may get me canceled or whatever, but I actually tend to agree with Cornette's overall thoughts on how women's wrestling is being shoved to the forefront in recent years. In special cases like Rousey or even Becky getting crazy over, then yeah. I get it.

But at some point, it does just feel like they're trying to fill some quota or make sure the card is evenly split between males and females. Instead of focusing on what's good or worthwhile, it feels like it's more about what's fair or unfair. What's equal or unequal. What's balanced or unbalanced. And that, I think, is especially troublesome when you're already watching a 4-plus hour parade of same/same presentations over and over again. At some point, any sane person can't be faulted for leaning a little heavy on the fast forward button.

I still think his line of, "Jesus Christ. There are more girls on this card than there are people watching!" is an all-time classic. Fight me. I don't care. That's gold.

[Coffey]

I found it interesting on the Drive-Thru this week that it was seemingly the first time either Jim or Brian had heard the Jericho rant after his match with Rob Van Dam in 2002 that he posted online. I remember that being a pretty big topic when it first happened. Good ol' fragile ego Jericho blaming the fans. Somethings never change, I guess.

[Mad Dog]

On 6/6/2021 at 8:25 AM, SomethingSavage said:

I know it may get me canceled or whatever, but I actually tend to agree with Cornette's overall thoughts on how women's wrestling is being shoved to the forefront in recent years. In special cases like Rousey or even Becky getting crazy over, then yeah. I get it.

But at some point, it does just feel like they're trying to fill some quota or make sure the card is evenly split between males and females. Instead of focusing on what's good or worthwhile, it feels like it's more about what's fair or unfair. What's equal or unequal. What's balanced or unbalanced. And that, I think, is especially troublesome when you're already watching a 4-plus hour parade of same/same presentations over and over again. At some point, any sane person can't be faulted for leaning a little heavy on the fast forward button.

I still think his line of, "Jesus Christ. There are more girls on this card than there are people watching!" is an all-time classic. Fight me. I don't care. That's gold.

My problem with the women's wrestling push is the constant overpraise of super mediocre matches. Yes, there are some good high end matches in WWE but the vast majority of their women's matches are still snoozefests especially if you have access to promotions like Ice Ribbon or Stardom or even Impact honestly. There's good women's wrestling out there but you wouldn't know it because it's all about a couple of women in WWE.

Like a great example is WarGames in NXT. NXT has ruined WarGames in general but the need to have a women's WarGames waters the gimmick down. Like sure, if you have a good narrative reason, go for it but it just feels tacked on most years. 

[PhilTLL]

Cornette recently unblocked Meltzer on Twitter to ask, "Hey Dave, why do you feel the need to constantly slander me behind my back and continue to email me about innocuous random shit like we're still friends?" People asked why he didn't do it privately, to which he says he tried over and over but Dave just doesn't understand that Jim no longer considers him a friend. Jim says it's fine if Dave wants to bury him and love AEW, but he can't stand the constant two-faced attempts to maintain a friendship. Jim makes it clear that this is definitely not a work to him, he thinks Dave is a "backstabbing prick," and quotes emails from Dave on everything from wrestling trivia to "thank you for the political talk," that last one coming after Dave had just compared Jim to Donald Trump (yet again) in the WON.

Jim brings up how Dave on Twitter defended him from blame in the immediate aftermath of the AEW fan incident, but changed his tune in the WON after Omega and others blamed Jim, when Dave started suggesting that the fan's claimed inspiration was proof enough of the problem with Jim. (Jim notes that would place the blame on Jodie Foster for the Reagan assassination attempt.) Dave called Jim a "shock jock" (which Jim says was right out of Omega's mouth) and said Jim is just bitter because the success of Omega and the Bucks proves that times change.

Jim and Brian think Dave is just thrilled that the young cool kids have let him into their circle, and Dave can't handle affronts to his new gospel and his power to anoint. They touch on the Trump comparison again, and point out since Dave knows exactly where they stand politically, it's just a cheap attempt to piss them off and fire up his own fans, as are Dave's direct insults to Jim's fans. They also take down Omega's "smarmy, smart-aleck piece of shit" notes to Jim. 

Jim tells Dave, since he knows he's listening, to think back to the last time Dave was a guest on the show, about 3 years ago. Jim couldn't get Dave to knock all the stuff Jim thought was silly, but they didn't curse each other out and they had a perfectly nice conversation. They've known each other over 30 years, and they both have a good idea of each other's thoughts, personalities, and modes of expression. Three years ago, Jim still thought highly of Dave's commitment to reporting the news and telling the story of wrestling in balanced and accurate ways. Unlike the Bruce Prichards and Eric Bischoffs of the world, Dave was a truth teller. (Briefly, Jim admits that he was wrong about AEW going off the air during the pandemic, which Dave harps on constantly, but says he's still right about the shit being terrible.) But at some point when Jim continued the detailed criticisms of AEW, he thinks Dave went from simple disagreements to discrediting his opinions: Jim just says shock jock attention stuff, he's out of touch, his experience doesn't mean anything. At this point Jim sent Dave:

Quote

 

"a personal email telling him, 'Fuck you, I'm tired of you knocking me and telling people I don't know what I'm talking about on the internet at every chance you get when I've done nothing but take up for you and defend you for what I believed was true. I'm sick and fed up with you slandering the Midnight Express'--I told him this a couple or three times on Twitter and finally at email--'saying the Young Bucks are the modern Midnight Express, the Express did not get into this thing between me and you and there's no need to talk about them like that.' I told him that a couple of times and finally I said, 'Fuck it. You like these guys so much, fine, you backstabbing prick. Fuck you, love on them all you want, we're done.'

And then he still wouldn't stop sending me these fucking emails so I had to tell him again, I think I sent you (Brian) the second one, 'We're fucking done, asshole backstabber turncoat traitor. I was not the one knocking you, you were knocking me. I laughed about your fucking weird wrestling taste but I defended you as a person, and you proceed to--because you're so in love with Twinkletoes's ballsack and the Hardly Boys's fucking taints--then you're going to stab me in the back and slander me all over the place.' I'll tell you again publicly now again 'cause I've told you privately and it don't take:

Fuck you, we're done, I don't ever want to speak to you again or see you. I think you've gone completely insane, so do many of your old friends, I don't know what's going on in your fucking life. Are you on medication you need to be off of, are you off of some you need to be on? But get this through your head, it ain't a gimmick, it ain't shock jock, you oughta know better than anybody, it's me! I don't like them and now I don't like you.

And I'm going to continue to say whatever the fuck I want to say about their shitty wrestling 'cause they're sabotaging a business I spent 40 years in and used to have a lot of affection for. I am not advocating anybody commit violence and mayhem toward them, 'cause they're doing a good job of crippling each other on their own just by trying to have these shitty wrestling matches, but to try to fucking blame me because some drunk wannabe delusional asshole jumps up on the ring, doesn't even make it in, because I tell people that their wrestling sucks, fuck you. You know why the guy jumped up in the ring? Because everybody can play, nothing about this is in any way serious, it's all a fucking clown show, everybody can take part, nobody's serious and nobody's really getting hurt, except for all the people that really get hurt 'cause we don't know to work.

Otherwise Dave, from me to you after all these years, please take this to heart. FUCK you, leave me alone, turn blue and drop over." 

 

Okay back to summarizing! Jim asks an incredibly simple question, why did they not arrest the guy who jumped in the ring? He was on Twitter and YouTube the next day bragging about it, apparently not from jail. If he caught charges, Jim says nobody's reported it yet. 

Jim reiterates that Dave is acting like a jilted lover who doesn't seem to understand that Jim has no interest in his friendship because of his backstabbing tendencies, that he thinks Dave is just mad that Jim won't apologize for the way he talks about AEW, and that Dave has largely become a mouthpiece and ad outlet for them.

Brian says Dave's credibility is at an all time low, especially his inability to analyze modern wrestling, both the endlessly overrated matches and his lack of insight about the business. He calls Dave a 60-year-old man trying to fit in at a K-pop concert, and thinks Dave hates Brian and Jim because they don't bother with that. He says Dave has no business attacking Jim's fans when his own forum community is an embarrassment.

They go into a little aside: Bryan Alvarez's "100 things every WWE fan should know and do before they die" won Observer's book of the year over serious, heavily-researched biographies about Buddy Rogers and Andre the Giant, which doesn't say great things about the intelligence of even Observer award voters, much less the great mass of Dave's fans. Brian Last is trying to be nice to Bryan Alvarez, but Jim slides in a nice dig about how "that's some potato-chip picture book that you read on the toilet." 

Brian thinks it's funny that Dave suggested Brian should cut bait with Jim, much like Brian said Kenny Omega should cut bait with Don Callis. Jim and Brian blow Dave up for this because of unreported harassment stories about Callis.

Brian says "Dave is in a midlife crisis in a wrestling bubble. ... He is completely in love with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks, he anointed them, and if you have a problem with them, he comes after you." They point out how vicious and rude Dave is to perceived critics on Twitter, which makes him a hypocrite.

They do another four minutes about how Dave is a two-faced, condescending, backstabbing prick who's either oblivious or unconcerned about how his actions drive people away. Brian says he watched Jim bite his tongue over and over on this. Jim says he has never seriously cursed out someone in that way before and completely burned a friendship, only to have someone no-sell it, which they deem Costanza-esque.

[Gertner]

And this is why I don't bother with Cornette's shows anymore

[PhilTLL]

Somebody asked. Take it or leave it.

[Coffey]

I mean, honestly, Cornette is over-the-top with the way he phrases shit - certainly when he's in the middle of a rant - but ultimately, his takes on modern wrestling more align with mine than pretty much anyone else in the podcast world. And them referring to Meltzer as the 60-year-old at a K-pop concert is about as spot on the nose as you can get.

[SomethingSavage]

2 hours ago, Coffey said:

I mean, honestly, Cornette is over-the-top with the way he phrases shit - certainly when he's in the middle of a rant - but ultimately, his takes on modern wrestling more align with mine than pretty much anyone else in the podcast world. And them referring to Meltzer as the 60-year-old at a K-pop concert is about as spot on the nose as you can get.

This. Only this.

[PhilTLL]

I have to admit I am the same. The sheer number of wrestling fans in the US, the relative amount of money available to make in wrestling, and the number of people making that money have all shrunk decade after decade in exactly the way that Cornette describes, and he was there and involved during a bunch of the better times, so it's probably worth listening to why he thinks that is. He's not always on target with how he would restore the business, possibly because that is a lost cause at this point, but he's frequently right in describing what's wrong with it and how crucially it differs from what was once right/profitable.

[NintendoLogic]

The opening was a total gut punch, both because of his voice cracking and him saying he'd almost as soon never do another podcast again than have to do this. I think the best tribute to Eaton would be if this inspires him to let some grudges go. He doesn't have to start liking AEW, but he can agree to disagree while focusing on the history of the business and other things he enjoys. Life's too short be spend it consumed by the stuff you hate.

[C.S.]

7 hours ago, PhilTLL said:

Somebody asked. Take it or leave it.

That was me. Thank you so much for such a detailed write-up.

Dave and Jim seem to have a weird sibling rivalry dynamic almost.

It seems absurd to me that Jim would suddenly start hating Dave just because Dave likes the Bucks and Omega.

Dave comparing The Bucks to The Midnight Express seems silly on the surface if he really means it, but I wonder if Jim took it as a petty dig by Dave, and that's what he's upset about.

Good point by Jim that Dave's fandom is just as bad, if not worse. The WON message board was a complete embarrassment when I visited it several years ago, and I assume it still is. The Torch board was actually very polite and chill, so it can be done.

[PhilTLL]

I think Jim is mad about exactly what he says he is, the fact that Dave can no longer just disagree with him like they did cordially for many years, but instead has to attack his credibility and him as a person--and then Dave has the gall to act like that's all a work and they're still friends. I'd be mad too. (But yes I am quite positive he takes the Bucks comparison as a sarcastic dig.)

[Coffey]

I feel like women's wrestling is probably the biggest area that I disagree with Cornette about. He rarely can even convey his point about women without it coming across as sexist. Often he'll even completely write them off & not watch their stuff. Which is odd as he very obviously loves Charlotte Flair & Rhea Ripley & will go out of his way to both watch & praise them. I do agree that a lot of people seemingly rate the women on a curve also, which probably doesn't help matters. That was somewhat mentioned in the AEW section about how people tend to overrate the women & I think that does more harm than good. Same kind of thing that I think hurts the Bucks & Omega when Meltzer puts them on a pedestal. 

Jim is also not super fond of Japanese wrestling, which most of my favorite all-time matches involving a lot of my favorite all-time wrestlers like Stan Hansen, happened in Japan. 

Also, he often makes jokes, jokes that you can tell he's been making for years, and a lot of younger, more modern fans don't realize he's joking & take his stuff out of context. When there's a mob mentality & tribalism in pro-wrestling now, everyone is always looking for the next thing to get mad about & Cornette frequently stokes that fire. I would even argue he does that purposely. The stoking, not the outdated jokes. I think the outdatedness just comes from the fact that he's almost 60-years-old & isn't great with technology. So he's not exactly up to date with how the world, especially the internet, has changed around him. Hell if you've just listened to him try to talk about his recent internet problems or his e-mail problems you can tell he doesn't have the first single clue about anything computer related.

It's actually somewhat fascinating to me that he leans Democratic politically when you consider a lot of his other views & how he's from Kentucky. That's why Meltzer making the Trump comment set him off so much. 

Ultimately, I like Jim Cornette & I like AEW. I don't have to like everything that either of them same or do but I can still like them both without having to choose one or the other. Too many people, especially on websites like Twitter, seem to think everything is either a this or that decision & it's just not.

[sek69]

Jim may get mad at Dave for mentioning it, but he does act a lot like Trump and his fans act an awful lot like MAGA loonies who go after anyone who says a bad word about their dear leader. The reason Dave would make those comparisons was to point out the irony of how even though they are opposites politically, Jim does act very similar to him at times.

Case in point, everyone who disagrees with him gets some sort of disparaging nickname and he takes everything as a personal slight. 

To be fair, I've long believed Dave is on the spectrum (even more so since raising my son who is also on it) and I honestly believe Dave thinks Jim is working and doesn't get the social clues being sent that say the opposite. I know that is an unpopular statement since people use that as a slur to attack someone a lot on the internet, but the infatuation with numbers/getting stuck on minor points and going on tangents about them/his obsessive work ethic....to me it's all telltale signs that if taken that way explain a lot about how he acts/behaves. 

Both men at this point would be better suited just never mentioning the other's name, but both guys being who they are that isn't  likely to happen. 

[Gertner]

Comparing Cornette to Trump and his ride or die fans to MAGA supporters is spot friggen on and I'm a fan of Cornette....when it sticks to talking about old wrestling.