Jim Cornette Reveals His Biggest Regrets In The Wrestling Business
Jim Cornette has discussed his regrets in the wrestling business saying they are far and few between but singled out his time at Ring Of Honor as something that sticks out.
Cornette was discussing his career on his ‘Jim Cornette’s Drive Thru’ podcast when he was asked if he had any regrets from his career.
Cornette responded:
“Well, not sticking out WCW, not sticking it out where me, Bobby, and Stan could have all left together. but then maybe they still would’ve kept Bobby. But it was me getting mad that caused us to break up six months early when I got mad at f*cking Ole [Anderson]. But [Jim] Herd was still there and I was already looking forward to Smoky Mountain Wrestling. I just wanted all three of us to go.”
Moving to more modern times, Jim Cornette then recounted his time as Executive Producer of Ring Of Honor between 2009 and 2012:
“You know, wasting some time, to be honest with Ring Of Honor. That was a year and a half that I spent trying to f*cking get that thing done. And then, you know, to be blistered and ostracized by everybody for ‘Aw sh*t Cornette f*cking wrecked Ring Of Honor’ when I saved Ring Of Honor. It was out of business unless I came there. Which has been f*cking validated and the stories told by Cary Silkin and everyone down.”
“But also I believed that Sinclair was going to do what we had pitched them to do when they bought the company and that wasn’t the case. They bought it and ‘Well let’s see how cheap we can be for as long as we can be.’ My thought was they were going to buy the equipment, the TV equipment, the world-class website, which was the key to the whole thing, these internet pay-per-views. Imagine that everybody being able to send us money from around the world and watch our shows from everywhere around the world. It’s worked out good 10 years later. But we ended up with Greg the office boy and his f*cking college friends and stuck with Go Fight Live and all that sh*t.”
In hindsight, Cornette says if he was to do it all again, he probably wouldn’t bother:
“I think if I had it to do over again, I would have just probably f*cking stayed home and rested. I thought it was going to go farther quicker, it did not. But to take all the f*cking heat – but part of it I didn’t mind because the part that was the old Ring Of Honor fans that actually thought when Jack Evans was there that was the golden era of Ring Of Honor. When all the guys in the f*cking company were 140 pounds, 17 years old, and just doing every move they knew. I didn’t care what those fans thought because they were gonna be p*ssed off that they weren’t in a private club anymore. That this thing was out on television now where everybody could get a good taste of it.”
“But being hamstrung by Joe Koff telling me ‘Well don’t go out and tell everybody that Go Fight Live f*cked this thing up because we still might want to deal with them.’ Why?! Or don’t go out and apologise for this or that, that we f*cked up, go out and tell them they’re lucky they got it for as little money as they did. And all that shit, that’s when a lot of the newer fans when I’d been saying ‘Oh this is gonna be so great’ they were like ‘Well f*ck apparently it’s not Cornette, you’re nuts.'”
“In two years, in just a two-year period trying to get Ring Of Honor and Sinclair Broadcasting in the wrestling business and everybody altogether on the same page. I had my first ever treadmill hard stress test, I was having chest pains, I was goddamn back up to 250 f*cking pounds. So as I look back now and how much happier I’ve been since that was over with, I might have dodged that f*cking two or three year period there.”
As far as the rest of his time in the wrestling business, Jim Cornette adds that he does regret that his Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion failed to have longevity:
“As far as in the business other than breaking up The Midnight Express, and did I regret that Smoky Mountain Wrestling didn’t go? Yes. I would’ve stayed there forever because it was regional territorial wrestling but it would have cost me a lot of money because if we were just making a decent profit, I would have never left there and would have turned down everything I’ve done since then where I made a whole lot more money.”
In more recent years, Cornette caused controversy by telling an offensive joke while commentating for the rebooted NWA. The fallout from Cornette’s comment cost him his job there but for Cornette, it’s not on his shortlist of regrets.
Cornette explained:
“Even the chicken joke in the NWA , that’s why I wouldn’t apologise for it because it didn’t f*cking mean anything bad to anybody by it. And I wasn’t sorry I said it and I wasn’t gonna goddamn put up with somebody apologising for me when they were the ones that f*cking aired it. So I don’t regret it. It would have been easier handled either if it was just edited out before it aired and I wouldn’t have said anything or if liver-lipped Lagana had grouped himself in that apology and phrased it more as ‘Cornette told an old joke that a lot of the people didn’t understand these days,’ instead of ‘made offensive comments’ and didn’t describe what they were. But I don’t regret that line because I wasn’t trying to p*ss anybody off.”
Credit: Jim Cornette’s Drive Thru