Jim Cornette has offered his thoughts on the raft of allegations surrounding Vince McMahon, revealing when he believes the culture behind the scenes in WWE shifted dramatically.
Vince McMahon is currently embroiled in the biggest scandal to hit WWE for a number of decades. Not since the steroid trial in the early 1990’s has McMahon’s position in WWE been under this level of threat.
In June it was reported that Vince McMahon was being investigated by WWE’s Board of Directors over claims that he had given a $3 million “hush payment” to a former employee with whom he had an affair.
After news of this investigation was made public, McMahon stepped down from his responsibilities as CEO and Chairman of the Board. He was replaced on an interim basis by Stephanie McMahon.
Then on July 8th more claims were brought to light. The new report alleged that McMahon paid more than $12 million to four women formerly associated with WWE over the course of 16 years. One claim alleges that McMahon coerced a female wrestler into performing oral sex on him. It is also claimed that McMahon demoted the wrestler when she ended their affair and failed to renew their contract after she turned down further sexual advances.
It is alleged that McMahon paid the woman $7.5 million in exchange for her silence.
One man who has known Vince McMahon for a number of years, and also worked alongside the WWE boss is Jim Cornette.
Speaking exclusively to Inside The Ropes’ very own Kenny McIntosh, Cornette gave his thoughts on the allegations surrounding McMahon. Cornette began by expressing his surprise at some of the details involved in the claims, before recalling his own experience of working with the billionaire.
“I don’t know if shocked is [the right word]. I am gobsmacked, astounded and bumfuzzled at some of the details. I am not necessarily shocked at the activity, but here’s the thing, and I have said this on my podcast, but I will say to you also, just in case there is someone in the world that doesn’t listen to my shows.
When I worked with and for Vince McMahon, it was like having a good relationship with the high school principal. You could laugh and joke with him in the car or meetings if we were in a more informal setting instead of a big production meeting or whatever.
And you could tell jokes and you would get the attaboy every once in a while, sometimes there would be the look over the glasses over the nose like sit up straight and grab your tie for a little bit. But you never got the impression that you could just completely just f*ck up and just do ludicrous sh*t that you know that you shouldn’t be doing.
I have heard stories about him the 80’s when they first started doing the expansion and The Hart Foundation giving him their finisher in a bar, a strip club or something. Well he was younger then, he has matured a little bit, the steroid trial, he has tried to run a little straighter laced company. But I never got the impression from Vince, again being in a room with men, and Russo was there sometimes as well.
You know, there would be comments made about the appearance of a girl, but we were the ones to kind of ass off, all of his minions, he would be the one to go [clears throat] and get us back to work. So he always had a bit of a you know, straight posture with him, upright.”
Cornette continued by explaining that while McMahon did have that more serious side to him, he also loved juvenile, bodily function humour. However, with regard to the allegations, the legendary manager said that nothing of that nature was happening in the mid-to-late 1990’s.
“At the same time, he likes his fart jokes, bodily function humour, sh*t like that. But I said to you before we went on the air with this, if you pointed a gun at me in 1996 and said ‘True or false, if you are wrong I am shooting you. Vince McMahon possesses a naked photo of himself.’ I’m saying false. Now I realise that I would have been mowed down in the street!
The amount of money paid out shocks and surprises me. The fact that he was actively with employees or as we have found out, some of the talent on the roster in one or two cases. Nobody has been named and I’m not trying to implicate or finger anybody in this. But if you were to say that Vince were to mess around with one of the divas on the roster, holy sh*t! Not because he wouldn’t have wanted to, but I didn’t and he didn’t give us any reason to. None of this sh*t was going on then.”
The promotor turned podcaster suggested that the culture within WWE shifted dramatically when it became a publicly traded company in October 1999. Cornette noted that this caused everyone to “lose their rabbit ass f*cking minds.”
“Brian Last has narrowed this down, because he has done more research than I do on things like this, when they went public with that stock and they bought their own plane, it seems like all of a sudden Vince went from the owner of the company to back to f*cking college with the fraternity.
They are having plane rides from hell, everyone is getting drunk and with shaving cream, shaving people’s hair off. Meanwhile Vince is on the plane having the meetings with the certain divas and Laurinaitis of all people is involved, there’s another one. I knew he was a smiling yes man, but I never knew that he was a smiling ladies man.
So after they went public and they bought their own plane and they are all worth billions of dollars, I think that they have all lost their rabbit ass f*cking minds.
So unless there was two Vince McMahon’s and he was twins all along, and they did the Hebner deal and replaced Vince with his older brother ‘Bince,’ maybe that is where they got Ezekiel, Elias and Elrod from. I am surprised at the behaviour in his own company and that type of thing.”
You can listen to the first part of Inside The Ropes’ exclusive chat with Jim Cornette in full here.
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