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What's up, wrestling fans? Richard Boudreau here. Welcome to a brand new edition of Kayfabe
Kickout Audio for December 21, 2013 for Kayfabekickout.com, putting the pro back in pro wrestling. Today
my very special guest is a man who needs no introduction but I will give him one anyway.
He is the man, not a myth but certainly a legend in professional wrestling. Former WCW,
NWA, WWE, TNA, ROH executive, one of the greatest professional...
Jim Cornette: Don't leave out OVW! Richard: OVW, yes, absolutely. Smoking Mountain
Wrestling, Memphis Wrestling, one of the greatest professional wrestling managers of all time,
and a brilliant wrestling mind, Jim Cornette. Jim, how are you?
Jim: Richard, I'm great. Thank you for having me on the program.
Richard: You are very welcome. First off, I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas,
I say Merry Christmas because I know you are an old school guy from Louisville, Kentucky.
That says Merry Christmas, and not this Happy Holidays ***.
Jim: I like Merry Christmas, I like Happy Holidays, I am a big New Year's fan, I like
any excuse to eat good food, give people presents, and get some in return. I am all about that.
Richard: Absolutely. One of my favorite times of the year as well. Let's start the
show off, you have a brand new book called, "Rags, Paper and Pins: The Merchandising of
Memphis Wrestling." Can you just tell the listeners, what this
book is all about? Jim: Mark James, my co‑writer who does
the memphiswrestlinghistory.com website, came up to see me, I guess it was last February
and spent a couple of days at Castle Cornette, and saw the memorabilia collection I have.
He's done some great books on Wrestling History, Memphis in particular. We decided to do a
little something different because a lot of books have been published with just results
of matches, different things, and clippings. But, we went back because Memphis as a wrestling
territory was on the cutting edge of merchandising back before you could get TitanTrons and action
figures, underwear with wrestlers' faces on it. Most of the wrestling merchandise was
sold in the arena. The Memphis territory was ahead of its time
on that with selling not only, programs, magazines, and pictures but also records; Memphis being
the birth of the blues, and the home of rock, soul, and all those musical genres.
Records and different pieces of merchandise, and so, we went back and reproduced so many
of those, all the way back to the 50's. The programs, of course, that's the way that I
got started in wrestling was taking pictures at ringside for the magazines and programs
in the Memphis territory, so I have a huge collection of photos.
We put together a 350 page book that not only takes you chronologically from the early '50s
up to the glory period of the '80s, but also is kind of my autobiography of my teenage
years and how I got started in wrestling. How the guys in Memphis with 8 or 10,000 people
a week in the Memphis Mid‑South Coliseum alone, and wrestling six and seven nights
a week, these guys with one dollar and three dollar pictures at the merchandise tables
were making more money at merchandise than they were wrestling in some cases.
We've told that story, we've re‑capped the big gates and crowds and rivalries and feuds
and top stars, and even picked the top five of Memphis records. I'm not Casey Kasem but
I did a pretty good job at it. That is available, by the way, as are all
of my fine products and merchandise, at jimcornette.com. It's also available on Amazon for the folks
who don't want an autographed copy, because I don't live in the Amazon offices. If you
go to jimcornette.com, you can get autographed copies, you can go to Amazon and get that
book, and of course only available at jimcornette.com are also my Midnight Express and Jim Cornette
25th Anniversary Scrapbook, which won the Wrestling Observer Book of the Year Award
a few years ago. Lots of great stuff. It may be too late to
shop for Christmas but it's never too late to get fine wrestling products for the wrestling
fan in the family, the Cornette fan in the family or just the fan of quality merchandise.
Richard: Absolutely. I don't know any wrestling fan who in their right mind wouldn't want
an autographed copy. I look forward to getting this book myself, because I'm a big fan of
wrestling books in general. When you worked for Memphis Wrestling, whose idea was it to
start dishing out merchandise? Whose idea was that?
Jim: They had sold programs at the matches back since there were paper and matches. But
then the old days, back in the '60s and '70s, guys found that there was a market for the
old black and white eight by ten publicity photos. Those were sold at the matches for
quite a while, along with some autograph albums and things of that nature.
Then when I came along, being a fresh‑faced young teenager here in Louisville and started
taking color pictures, Christine Jarrett who was Jerry Jarrett's mother, Jeff Jarrett's
grandmother, she was the promoter for the matches here in Louisville and around the
area. She saw those pictures and said, I think those would really sell because they look
so much nicer than the black and white ones. By the time I was 15 years old, I kind of
had my own little side business, because they eventually replaced the old 8x10 black and
white photos that were of somewhat lesser quality. As they say, the rest is history.
It snowballed from there. Richard: Wow. That's amazing, because when
I think back to wrestling in the '50s and '60s, most, including myself, most wrestling
fans probably never would have clued in that there was even real merchandising back then.
Jim: Some territories didn't do it. There were a lot of arena programs in most places,
but some of the wrestling territories didn't go any further with the merchandise. The Tennessee
territory, being as they did great business and had huge crowds in Louisville and Nashville
and Memphis and places like that but they didn't necessarily have the big population
centers of New York or Chicago, etc. so to as an extra added incentive, Jerry Jarrett
is the one who really took off with it and who realized that if he allowed the guys to
have their picture money then he could afford much better talent than if they were just
working on payoffs alone. As a result it worked out well for everybody.
Richard: Yeah, it definitely sounds like it did. I mean, can you imagine if we go back
to the '50s, if say Gorgeous George had merchandising like t‑shirts, action figures, he probably
would've made even more money than he did when he was a top star.
Jim: We figured out because I was involved with that from 1975 until I got in the business
as manager in 1982, and in that six to seven year period, we were able to basically go
back through my old records and figure out that some guys like Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee
and Jimmy Valiant sold anywhere between 150 and 300,000 photos for those years at a dollar
and three dollars a piece. [laughs] Actually, my mother started driving me to
the matches because when I started taking pictures I was too young for a driver's license,
and by the time that I got one, she had become one of the merchandise salespeople. We also
figured out, just to make the independent wrestlers of today a little jealous, the two
ladies who sold pictures and merchandise at the Louisville Gardens every Tuesday night,
52 weeks a year, just on their 10% a piece commission for selling the pictures, probably
made about 4 or 5 thousand dollars a year in cash a piece by just selling merchandise.
One night for three hours on Tuesday. [laughs] But that was before Vince McMahon made wrestling
a big business, you understand. Richard: Yes, for sure. With numbers like
that, it sounded like even women who are ladies of the evening didn't do as well as people
did in Memphis. [laughs] Jim: I tell you what, there were quite a
few female fans back then too, when you had guys like Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee and
The Fabulous Ones and The Rock 'n' Roll Express and all those heartthrobs, the crowds in some
cases were 60% female back in those days. Of course when you had a town like Memphis
which just did insane numbers for so many years, it's a recorded fact that in 1974,
51 wrestling shows at the Mid‑South Coliseum drew a total of 350,000 paid admissions.
Richard: Wow. Jim: 40 years later, find me a city anywhere
in the world that sells 350,000 wrestling tickets a year and I'll eat your hat even
if you're not wearing one. Richard: [laughs] Yeah, no, I think you
hit the nail right on the head there. I honestly can't think of any city in the world that
would draw big numbers like that. [laughs] In 2013, as you know, the scope, the landscape
of pro wrestling has changed significantly. Jim: Mark and I have a series of books planned.
We're going to be covering Smoky Mountain Wrestling in 2014, and also we're doing research
for a book on Louisville wrestling history. There's an author here locally that's a friend
of mine named John Kosper who's had several non‑wrestling books published.
But he's doing research at the Louisville Free Public Library on the history of Louisville
wrestling going back to the turn of the 19th and 20th century, finding out some things
that I didn't even know, some great matches involving Jim Londos and Everett Marshall
and Lou Thesz as a rookie ‑‑ wrestled here because Saint Louis is right down the
road but Mark and I are going to be doing a book concentrating on the Memphis territory
‑‑ the Jerry Jarrett years, specifically from 1970 to 1985, much like he has done in
Memphis and I invite everyone to go to memphiswrestling.com and check out his fine publications.
But the Louisville Gardens ‑‑ the original arena here in town, is known for hosting more
major league professional wrestling events in the 20th century then any other arena in
the country. Richard: Wow.
Jim: There were weekly events from 1970 until the late '90s so that right there, from
the Memphis territory then later on Ohio Valley Wrestling took over the tradition ‑‑ that
right there is an accomplishment but The Gardens back when it was known as The Armory and later
on The Convention Center, was hosting regular weekly matches back in the '30s and '40s and
saw some tremendous crowds and some great talent including NWA world champions like
Lou Thesz and "Wild Bill" Longson and Everett Marshall and etc. It's really a city with
great wrestling history. We are going to be doing a series of publications
that focuses on the various eras of that venerable building.
Richard: That's tremendous. I think it's great that you and other people in the industry
are putting out books like this because for a lot of younger fans that are younger than
myself, that are generation Y fans that just know the product of the WWE and, to a lesser
extent, TNA. I think it will be fans that want to know more about the long, rich history
of professional wrestling ‑‑ can turn to books like yours.
Jim: We've got to keep these stories alive and I have one of the world's largest pro‑wrestling
memorabilia collections ‑‑ everybody knows, in a matter of fact if you go to my website
also ‑‑ and I'm not just trying to sell you things ‑‑ we've just completely redesigned
and revamped it in November and there's a section called, "From the Vault", where you
can go and see some of my most prized possessions ‑‑ there's pictures and anecdotes about
those and also a collection of my columns on wrestling history that I write for Fighting
Spirit magazine which is the United Kingdom's largest pro‑wrestling, MMA and combat sports
publication ‑‑ on the newsstands available all over the United Kingdom. Just look up
Fighting Spirit magazine on the web because they're one of those UK websites.
Of course I'm not trying to run you out of business, but while I'm doing all my plugs
Richard ‑‑ I've got my podcasts, "The Jim Cornette Experience" weekly on MLW radio,
you can go to mlw.com for more information about that or just go to jimcornette.com and
click on my podcasts link and it will take you right to it.
I've recently been lighting up Twitter, "@thejimcornette" you can follow me. Somebody got "jimcornette"
and we called Twitter to complain about it and they said, "If you can prove that you
are really Jim Cornette", the guy who took my name didn't have to prove he was Jim Cornette
[laughs] so why do I have to prove that I...? It's, "@thejimcornette", you can follow me
on Twitter can become a member of the Cult of Cornette.
You can also find out more information about my tour of the United Kingdom in February.
I'm going to be going to Glasgow Scotland, Manchester, Birmingham, London's Leicester
Square Theater, Cardiff, Wales. You know, this retirement thing is turning out to be
quite hectic, I'm like Jim Ross ‑‑ I'm busier now than I was when I was actually
active in the wrestling business. Richard: [laughs] You heard it here first
wrestling fans, like Jim said, you can check out his website, and staying on the topic
of your website, I have frequented quite often and when I saw your massive comic book collection,
I swear to God ‑‑ I screamed like a little twelve year old girl upon seeing The Beatles
for the first time at Shea Stadium. Jim: [laughs]
Richard: That's probably a little outdated reference for some of the younger listeners.
Jim: But I got it. Richard: You got it and I got it. I'm an
avid comic book collector myself but when I saw your collection, it was just absolutely
amazing. What are some of the prized comics you have?
Jim: I started collecting comic books through my older cousins when I was just five or six
years old and back in the late '60s, early '70s, they were 12 cents on the stands, and
you could get back issues for $2 or $3 at most ‑‑ if you were just looking for Marvels
and DCs, we're not talking about the golden age stuff.
By the time I got busy with wrestling in my late teens and had to give up something, I
had assembled a complete collection of every Marvel and DC superhero book from 1962 to
1975... Richard: Oh my god.
Jim: ...and I still have the majority of those. Over the past year since I've been
off the road with wrestling. If you go to the website you'll see the picture of the
vault that you were talking about ‑‑ I've got too much stuff in my house, I've been
a lifelong collector ‑‑ not only did I collect comic books and wrestling memorabilia
but toys, and horror movie memorabilia, hard back and paper back books, and pop culture,
I've got a giant vinyl record collection. Richard: Wow.
Jim: Something has to go because [laughs] . We live in a great big house but I'm running
out of room. Over the past year I've sold a few comic books off but my prized book still
remains ‑‑ my Amazing Fantasy 15... Richard: Wow. Oh my god.
Jim: ...that I bought in 1973 for $25 from the original owner, it's worth considerable
more now, for you non comic fans out there ‑‑ it's the first appearance of Spiderman.
Richard: Yes. Jim: I've been selling some of the other
comic books but if I keep one, it's going to be that one but I'm thinking about doing
a promotion in 2014 involving my Amazing Fantasy 15 and giving the fans a chance...if I'm going
to sell it, I want to find it a good home...so I going to give the fans, not only a chance
to purchase my Amazing Fantasy 15 ‑‑ that's been in my collection for 40 years but also
actually meet me in person to come pick it up.
More on that later, you can keep watching the website. I'm a big Avengers fan, I'm sitting
on top of a complete run of the Avengers ‑‑ one through one hundred. I really had everything
up until I sold a few as I've said over the past year, some nice stuff there. But when
you've got some 10,000 comic books in 52 white long boxes, that are sitting in front of your
4,000 wrestling video tapes. Richard: [laughs]
Jim: It's just hard to get to everything. Do you know what I'm saying Richard?
Richard: Absolutely, as I said I'm an avid comic book collector but I also collect memorabilia
myself ‑‑ action figures, action figures from the 1970s and '80s. I know what you're
saying, I'm running out of room myself. Your wife must be a very understanding woman? [laughs]
Jim: She is actually a collector also. She has her own interests including witches ‑‑ she's
got a large Wizard of OZ, Wicked Witch of the West collection.
Richard: Oh nice. Jim: She also is really into horror movies
like I am. We have a lot of autographed memorabilia from different horror movies, both classic
and modern. As a matter of fact, once again if you go
on the website, one of my favorite pieces of wrestling memorabilia, you may have seen
this, is about 25 years ago or thereabouts I obtained from the former NWA world champion
Pat O'Connor's widow after he passed away, there were three sets of these in the world.
The complete bound sets of all of the programs for Sam Muchnick's St. Louis wrestling promotions
from his first card in 1945 until his retirement in 1982. They were bound in books.
Richard: Oh my God. Jim: As Emeril would say, to bam, to just
jack it up a little bit, I took the first book to the Bad Blood pay‑per‑view in
St. Louis that the WWF put on in 1997 with all the former NWA champions. I had Sam Muchnick
himself plus Dory Funk, Jr., Terry Funk, Jack Brisco, Gene Kiniski, Harley Race.
Who am I leaving out here? Several of the former champions that were there, and then
also Ric Flair autographed it for me to make it one of a kind in the world. That is my
most prized wrestling possession and you can go to the website, you can see pictures of
those autographs and that bound set along with a wrestling illustrated magazine from
1965 with the Dream Match between Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz that never came about.
Bruno and Lou both personally autographed me the cover of that, and that's another of
my prized possessions. I've got a lot of one of a kind memorabilia here in capsule Cornette,
but I'm turning some of it into landscaping because I've got a lot of property and I've
got to plant some new trees. Richard: Wow, that's tremendous. As a wrestling
fan and as a memorabilia fan, I wouldn't be able to put what you just described into any
sort of dollar value, because I think something like that would be absolutely priceless.
Jim: I've had three five‑figure bids that I turned down. That's something I'm going
to leave to my wife whenever I get hit by a bread truck and I'm six feet under, she's
going to have a bed and breakfast somewhere on the coast on the ocean.
[laughter] That's probably what's going to finance that.
Richard: Absolutely. Like you said, the over 10,000 comics that you have in your collection,
that could most likely fund your wife and the rest of your family the rest of their
lives. Jim: I guess I should mention by the way
that the castle is also wired up with a state of the art alarm system, so if anybody touches
a window while I'm not home, the house goes off like a Roman candle. [laughs]
Richard: There you go. No, absolutely, I would imagine you would have to have some
sort of safeguards in effect at Castle Cornette to secure all those valuables. [laughs]
Jim: But like I said, I've enjoyed collecting things but also I enjoy keeping these wrestling
stories alive with the publications that we're doing. Mark James is a tremendous guy to work
with. He's the Internet and technical wiz and I'm the research and memorabilia collecting
half of the partnership. It's turned out really well and we're proud of the books and the
publications that we're producing. It's something to keep me off the streets at night also,
you know? I don't want to get in trouble. [laughter]
Richard: Well all these books that you commented that you're planning on releasing are just
tremendous and I look forward to buying and reading all of them. Let's talk about your
career in pro wrestling. Your gimmick when you started out as a professional wrestling
manager you know as the inept manager who kept getting fired by all of his clients.
Who came up with that gimmick? Jim: Well Jerry Jarrett obviously I owe
almost everything to. The only person I owe really more to than Jerry Jarrett, Bill Watts
for making me a main event player in wrestling, Dusty Rhodes for making the Midnight Express
so valuable and such a main event attraction, but Christine Jarrett, Jerry's mother actually
is who got me my start. As I said, my mother used to drive me to the
matches before I was old enough to have a driver's license. After six or seven years
of me hanging around, doing the ring announcing, taking the pictures, helping sell merchandise,
being a general all around gopher, Jerry approached me right before my 21st birthday and he said
"Would you like to be a manager?" and homina, homina, homina, homina, I sounded like Ralph
Kramden. I didn't know what to say. Richard: [laughs]
Jim: But Jerry had the idea that uh, a takeoff on the old Playboy Gary Hart gimmick that
he had in the early '60s when he got into professional wrestling, was that he came from
a rich wealthy family in Chicago and that his mother had bought his way in. Of course
the Playboy part didn't fit me, but it was believable to the wrestling fans since they'd
seen me with my mom. He came up with the idea that obviously I wouldn't be a heel right
off the bat. I was just this clueless rich putz that wanted to buy my way into something
that was reserved for real men who had to fight their way. As a result I would get natural
heat from that. I started asking the heroes like Jerry Lawler
and Bill Dundee and Dutch Mantell if I could manage them and one by one they would turn
me down and then I would pitch a fit and then they would get a little stiffer with their
comments about me and that gave me a grudge against them to want to then sign up the heels
who would get even with these people who had embarrassed me with the name of Cornette and
my standing in society. It was a very natural way to enter and explain
why that suddenly this ringside photographer who was nice to everybody would suddenly be
such an arrogant prick. Jerry always wanted everything explained very logically and credibly
and wanted to tell the truth as much as possible so that when you did exaggerate, people couldn't
really tell where the line of fact and fiction was blurred and that that was what he came
up with thanks to not only working with great talent like Lawler and Dundee and Dutch, but
also a great announcer like Lance Russell who was able to get these things over on television
really before I knew exactly what the *** I was doing.
You know, they made me look like I knew what I was doing. It was like dancing with Fred
Astaire. You can't look too bad. There you have it. [laughs]
Richard: Wow, um, you had mentioned earlier that you were kind of taken back when Jerry
approached you. What did you think of this gimmick? Were you apprehensive about doing
it or were you just ready to jump on in? Jim: Oh, are you kidding? I was so enamored
of wrestling and had been for so long and remained that way and I'm still probably the
world's biggest pro wrestling fan. It's just sports entertainment that gives me gas.
Richard: [laughs] Jim: But you know as soon as he said that,
he said you know, go home and ask your mother first of all if we can malign her on television,
and of course she knew how much I wanted to do it and she said yes without hesitation.
He said show up next week on TV with a suit if you want to do this. The next week I was
at TV taping, I actually had to buy a suit. I didn't own a suit at the time. Teenagers
weren't big suit wearers back in the '70s. But no, pretty much instantly. I think if
he'd have said I want you to wear a chicken suit, wave your arms over your head and cluck,
I'd have done that. Richard: [laughs] Oh man. Yeah, I remember,
I've been a wrestling fan since the mid‑'80s, 1985, and your gimmick as the rich, spoiled
*** that carried that god awful tennis racket to the ring and would use that as a
weapon is just like one of the fondest memories I have that stick in my mind when it comes
to professional wrestling managers. Jim: Well I appreciate that, and that was
something that set me apart also, because managers had always carried canes or umbrellas
or some form of blunt instrument but never a tennis racket. Actually I got that because
I watched one of the teen movies that were popular in the early '80s, and the rich kid
in the crowd was always carrying a badminton racket at this particular movie.
I can't even remember what the title was, but I said hmm, that might be an idea. It
came in handy not only to use in the matches but also because it gave me a couple of feet
worth of reach on all the fans that wanted to beat me up, because everybody knew they
could beat me up. I mean, I've had women attack me at the matches before.
Richard: [laughs] Jim: I'm not even kidding you. [laughs]
I've been punched, slapped and tackled by a number of females out of the crowd. At least
it gave me a little reach. I never hit a woman with the racket, but I've hit quite a number
of men. Richard: I can only imagine. That was back
in the days in the '70s and '80s when Kayfabe was still, when it wasn't on life support,
and fans actually took their pro wrestling a hell of a lot more seriously.
Jim: Well as a matter of fact, doing research for this upcoming book on Louisville history,
I'm going back through all my notebooks that I kept as a teenager when I was the ringside
photographer and going to the matches as a fan and reporting for the magazines. During
one three month period alone, I made note that there were seven incidents where fans
hit the ring, including one guy with a knife... [laughs]
Richard: Oh my God. Jim: ...and tried to attack the wrestlers
they were mad at. It even got the point where there was one night when Jimmy Hart first
got involved in wrestling as a manager, he was managing Jerry Lawler in Louisville, and
there was a match with Lawler and Ken Lucas. After the match, it ended in controversy and
Jimmy Hart jumped in and was wailing away on Ken Lucas after Lawler put him down, and
Lawler was holding the referee back so that Jimmy Hart could have his way with Ken Lucas
and a guy from the crowd leaped into the ring and just started railing on Jimmy Hart.
Richard: Oh my God. Jim: Instantly about six cops went in the
ring and grabbed this guy and just threw him, I have this on video tape as a matter of fact,
threw him a cartwheel over the top rope out to the floor, and just then from the other
side of the ring, Jerry Jarrett who was recognized as the promoter at the time, ran in the ring
in street clothes, because that was his time to come in and try to stop the melee.
One of the cops turned around and saw this guy in street clothes flat on the other side
of the ring and grabbed his gun and almost drew it out of the holster and then saw that
it was Jerry Jarrett and then dropped it at that point. But Jerry Jarrett almost got shot
in his own town [laughs] for coming into the ring on a finish that he called himself.
Richard: Wow, that's like unbelievable. Most wrestling fans today like wouldn't even
believe that such things happened in the '70s and '80s. You look at countries like Puerto
Rico where Kayfabe, it's still alive down there and fans still take wrestling pretty
seriously down there. Jim: Well you know, that's something that
obviously it's easier on the heels these days that they don't have fans attacking them with
knives and blunt instruments and their fists on a regular basis. But at the same time,
that type of emotion and passion and belief and, that's what kept people coming back week
after week to see their heroes finally triumph over the evil villains.
That's why a city the size of Louisville, which back in the '70s, the metropolitan area
population of Louisville maybe was half a million people, and we were drawing 3, 4,
5,000 people every Tuesday night to the Louisville Gardens. Now if you did that in New York today,
the same percentage you'd be drawing what, about half a million people for every match?
Richard: [laughs] Wow. That's an extremely impressive stat for Louisville because when
most wrestling fans think of what is the number one venue that most fans recognize in terms
of drawing big box office gates, and, most fans would say, obviously, Madison Square
Garden. But to hear a stat about Louisville, that's just amazing.
Jim: Even back in the '70s and '80s, Madison Square Garden, it was the mecca of wrestling
as far as the most people every month. They ran once a month and would sell out at 20
or 21,000, 22,000 people. Sometimes, they'd close circuit to the Felt Forum, which is
now, I believe, the Paramount Theater, but when you consider that that was 12 times a
year, that was still only about 300,000 people so Memphis was beating that number because
of the weekly events, and a lot of other cities, especially down South, were beating that number
as well because they had weekly events down South in these major arenas.
I recall in 1986‑‑this is documented in my Midnight Express scrapbook, available at
jimcornette.com‑‑four shows in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the Charlotte Colosseum
over a period of about 12 weeks drew three sell‑outs of 12,000, and one crowd of 8,000.
You're talking about 44,000 people that went to four shows in a period of about 12 weeks...
Richard: Jeez. Jim: ...and that was Midnight Express and
Rock n' Roll Express, by the way, were on all four of those shows, thank you very much,
and it just shows the tremendous business at the time that the NWA was doing. They just
weren't in the big media centers and the big areas like New York and Los Angeles where
they got all the attention, but I would venture to say that Greensboro, North Carolina, and
Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1986, drew more fans to see pro wrestling than any other cities
in the country. Richard: Wow, and that's back in the good
old days of the territory days and I think now, in 2013, in my opinion that you rarely
draw big numbers like that even for a global conglomerate like the WWE.
Jim: It's become a situation now that everything is exposed and somewhat pasteurized, and homogenized,
and sanitized. It's become a situation where once a year wrestling comes to town. It's
like the Harlem Globetrotters or Holiday on Ice; let's go see the show.
But back then, not only did the fans take wrestling seriously, but the wrestlers took
wrestling very seriously. We wouldn't be doing this interview right now, because I wouldn't
be telling you, "Oh, yes, this was entertainment." That was not only an offense worthy of being
fired if you were a wrestler, but also the guys in the locker room would beat you up
before the promoter got a chance to fire you. Richard: Yeah, absolutely. Back in the days
of Kayfabe, the Heels would drive in one car and the Babyfaces would drive in another.
They'd have separate dressing rooms. You don't see any of that anymore.
Jim: Well, there's no pretense, and that's why I've always said over the past couple
of years the most successful wrestling promotion in the world is now the UFC because their
fights are legitimate. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say anything against their
sport, but the way that they hype fights and the way that they build confrontations and
the way that they manage to make their stars looked at as the toughest guys in their weight
class on the planet, and they're going to have this title match and who's going to win.
That's exactly what pro wrestling did for the first 80 or so years of its existence
until the TV networks, and the people from outside wrestling, and the creative writers
got involved and decided to reinvent the wheel and put four corners on that wheel. Now there
are fewer people going to see wrestling live. There's fewer people watching wrestling on
television, and there's fewer people making a living full‑time in the wrestling business
than at any point since the late 1800s. It's a shame.
Richard: It really is. Jim: But you can't put the toothpaste back
in the tube. Richard: No, unfortunately not. It's interesting
that you mention the UFC because, I don't know if you're a boxing fan, but the Mayweather‑Álvarez
fight, that was promoted in such an excellent way. I actually thought for a minute I was
watching pro wrestling because of the buildup. They have promos.
I know Álvarez is not a master of English but even his promos were fantastic and, of
course, Mayweather is like one of the most magnetic, charismatic athletes on the face
of the planet. It's sad that pro wrestling has distanced itself from those aspects of
building matches and having months upon months‑long feuds. It's really a shame that it's just
another form of entertainment. Jim: I've never been a huge boxing fan although
obviously since I'm from Louisville, Muhammad Ali is of interest to everybody in town, and
for the Ali‑Frasier fight and Ali‑Foreman and those classic fights in the '60s, '70s
and even almost into the '80s that Ali had, that was transcendent of boxing into a cultural
phenomenon. Ali, growing up here in Louisville was a wrestling
fan, watched wrestling on TV, and this is an accepted fact that's been documented and
talked about, Ali took his shtick, his promos, from the bad guy wrestlers that he saw on
television as a child. He was able to transfer that into his sport and make himself larger
than life. There are people who still believe that boxing
is completely legitimate, even though those in the know, know. It never got to the extent
of wrestling, and it never got manipulated to the extent of wrestling, but at the same
time, anybody who thinks that every boxing fight, boxing match has been completely legitimate,
I've got some ocean‑front property in Kentucky that I would love to sell you.
They just took care of their business better than we did. Sometimes even both guys in the
fight didn't know that it was a work. [laughs] Sometimes, the guy that was going over thought
he was really knocking the guy out, and the other guy was saying, "OK, I've got to check.
I'm going to take the bump at the right time." Richard: Yeah, that's right. I think nowadays
it's not only boxing that's kind of lopsided when it comes to being a work to a certain
extent, but I find even other sports like hockey and even NFL football, I think to a
certain extent there's a little bit of rigging going on.
Jim: Well, any time you sell tickets to something it becomes entertainment and it
naturally then becomes subject to being manipulated, but, of course, the Chicago White Sox, the
Black Sox Scandal, we could go on. It's harder to manipulate team sports, and that's what
wrestling started by being manipulated. Not worked, not choreographed, just manipulated.
Matches being made that the outcome could probably be figured by the folks in the know
and the matchmakers, and then some of the wrestlers started getting together amongst
themselves without even telling the promoters. This is about in the '20s and say, "Hey, we
could make a little more money if we just did a little more business." Things evolved
from there. Dana White, that's why I'm so proud of him
because he wants to distance himself from pro wrestling, and I don't blame him because
he wants everybody to realize that his fights are legitimate. At the same time the way that
they hype fights and certainly the guys like Chael Sonnen, who grew up as wrestling fans
and who are able to hype a fight, regardless of whether the fight is legitimate, that's
like number five or six on the reason of why people buy it.
They want to see the personalities. They want to see the conflict and the confrontation.
That's why it's become big money because not only do they get the chance to see the trash‑talking
that used to be associated with pro wrestling, but then they get to see a real fight on top
of it. You get the best of both worlds. Richard: Yeah, absolutely. Even though that
pro wrestling is a work, but injuries still occur. Now, you and I have something in common,
because for you it was Starrcade '86. You fell 20 feet off of scaffolding. I myself
fell off scaffolding close to 20 feet, and when I was in the military I shattered my
wrist. Looking back at that match, would you have done anything differently? Or, for fans
to make... Jim: [jokingly] Well, I would have not blown
my knee out if I could help it but... Richard: [laughs] Yeah, for some wrestling
fans that may not know what I'm talking about, just give us a little recap of that fateful
day. Jim: Well, the scaffold match at Starrcade
'86, actually it's what I'm most known for because, up until Mick Foley, Mankind, was
thrown off the top of the Hell in a Cell at King of the Ring in '98 by the Undertaker,
my scaffold match bump was the most replayed bump in the history of wrestling. [laughs]
Richard: I can believe it. Jim: [laughs] Imagine that, Jim Cornette,
of all people. But it was the Midnight Express vs. the Road Warriors, the Night of the Skywalkers,
Starrcade '86, the first million dollar gate that the NWA had ever drawn. At the end of
it, to try to take people's mind off the fact that the Midnight Express had lost, Dusty
Rhodes' idea which I went along with, maybe not wholeheartedly, but you didn't say no
in those days, was for me to be chased up the scaffold and hang and drop from it.
Scaffold matches had been invented in the Memphis territory, so I had seen a number
of them, but unfortunately this night they had a budget. Since they had a budget, they
made the biggest, highest scaffold we had ever seen. It was 24 feet off the floor, 21
feet off the ring... Richard: Oh my God.
Jim: ...and when I hung, I got two‑foot‑long arms and I'm six feet tall, that means I was
still about 16 feet up in the air... [laughs] Richard: Jesus. [laughs]
Jim: ...and when I landed, blew the anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee, tore up
a lot of the cartilage. It was very painful. It still hurts me in cold weather. But I got
a great payoff for that night. Of course, then I had surgery, and missed a few weeks
of work, so I lost most of it, but, at least, my most famous injury was witnessed by more
people than anything else that I ever did, and that, at least, is some small compensation.
Richard: Wow. Well, I mean, like you said, you got a fantastic payout from it, and unfortunately
you had to have surgery. When I watched that match, though, Big Bubba was involved in that
match. Now, you looked like you kind of missed the mark there when you were supposed to land
on him. Jim: He lost me in the lights. What happened
was Dusty's original vision for this thing was that I would hang from underneath the
scaffold because there was like a ladder monkey bar apparatus underneath the scaffold. I would
hang from it, and the Midnight Express and Big Bubba, who was 6'6" and 350 pounds, would
be underneath the scaffold. Dusty said, "Well, just kick your feet up, baby, just kick your
feet up. They'll catch you like they catch the cheerleaders at the football games."
We went out there in the Omni that night, in Atlanta, and looked at that thing before
the show, and I said, "The University of Alabama football team could not catch me coming off
that. I'll kill everybody." Plan B, a hastily thought‑out Plan B, was that, 'Well, I'll
just drop and I'll throw my arms out to the side, and Bubba's so much bigger than I am.
Bubba, if you can just get your arms under my arms then, break a little of my fall and
we will drop and roll to the left like the parachute jumpers." If you watch the tape,
you see Bubba under me and he's like...and suddenly when I let go, I defied gravity.
Instead of falling at a normal rate, it looked like I'd been shot out of a gun straight down,
and I just went through his arms and landed, blew my knee, I'm laying there, I'm screaming,
and Bubba's looking at me like, "Jimmy, you fell so fast!"
[laughter] Richard: Jesus. [laughs] Obviously, to this
day you don't hold any animosity towards Bubba for missing the target...
Jim: Oh, no, I mean, when I went back and watched the tape, my God, he'd have been an
idiot if he was under me. I probably would have killed him even the way I was coming
down. Richard: Yeah, absolutely.
Jim: He tried as best he could, but as he said, "Jimmy, you fell so fast!" [laughs]
Richard: Oh my God. Jim: But he did do one good thing for me,
because as he was standing there when I landed and crumpled and flew backward, the back of
my head flew back into his kneecap and it knocked me out about 20 seconds or so and
served as a natural anesthetic so that I didn't feel the immediate pain until I came to. [laughs]
Richard: Oh my God. Wow. So... Jim: That's the thing, and so many people,
and especially now that, once again, that wrestling has been exposed for being entertainment,
so many people go, "Well, they don't get hurt. They know how to fall." I've had chiropractors
tell me, when I was involved in training wrestlers, that a flat‑backed bump in a wrestling ring
is the equivalent of a rear‑end collision in a car at 30 miles an hour.
That's the snap, the punishment that you take. If you think of all the times these guys land,
whether it be in the ring, even though it's padded, or on a floor, even though there are
pads, it ain't ballet. Over the last 10, 15 years especially, we've had so many series
of neck injuries and really career‑ending injuries because the guys try to pop themselves,
and they try to go one step further. Just a simple move can end in disaster.
I was there at Summer Slam '97 in the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey when Owen Hart, one of
the most accomplished pro wrestlers in the world, gave Steve Austin a pile driver, and
hit Steve Austin's head. Unfortunately, it made way too much contact with the mat, and
he was paralyzed in the ring for about 30 seconds. It led to his retirement four or
five years later. The biggest box office attraction in the history of wrestling, it shortened
his career, from one simple move that's given and taken on a regular basis in wrestling.
Anything can happen. To say yes, it is entertainment and yes, it is predetermined, and yes, there
is cooperation, that's fine and good. But to say that nobody gets hurt and that it isn't
dangerous, is not only ludicrous but also insulting to the guys that go in there and
put their necks literally on the line every night for people's enjoyment. Yeah, it ain't
ballet. While it may be predetermined, it's still one of the most dangerous activities
you're going to undergo. Richard: Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, anybody,
the typical non‑wrestling fans will say that that *** is fake, and it's all predetermined,
and they know how to fall. It's like I say to them, "Watch the tape with you, and the
one with Mick Foley, and you get back to me and tell me that that *** is fake.
Jim: Well, it's like saying Evel Knievel's jumps were fake. He meant to do them, and
he worked them out ahead of time. [laughs] He was still at risk of dying every time that
he took off from that platform. That's unfortunately the case with pro wrestling. We have a saying,
"If you do it right, it hurts. If you do it wrong, you get hurt."
Richard: That's right. Yeah, absolutely. When you mentioned Steve Austin, I still cringe
when I see the video today, almost two decades later, and his neck just looked like an accordion.
He could have been paralyzed for the rest of his life, and apparently, I don't know,
you might know this better than I would, apparently to this day, well, now that Owen's not around,
apparently he never apologized to Steve for that. I don't know if that's true.
Jim: Well, no, that's not true. I believe he certainly apologized, but I don't necessarily
believe that Steve accepted it... Richard: OK. Understandable.
Jim: ...and it was less that, now if everything was equal, I'm sure that there would've been
a reconciliation, because Steve's a great guy and he understands things happen, but
it was just less than a year later that unfortunately Owen died in that tragic accident. They never
did get a chance to really reconcile over the thing.
Richard: Yeah, I know, absolutely. Yeah, and staying on the subject of Owen, you mentioned
his passing, and that horrific night in May, 1999. Where were you when all this went down?
Jim: Believe it or not, I was not there. That was actually the first WWF pay‑per‑view
that I had missed in about five years because I was preparing to move from Connecticut back
here to Louisville to start the developmental program with Ohio Valley Wrestling and was
not needed that night at the pay‑per‑view. I was like everybody else, I was sitting at
home watching it live as it happened. Obviously the incident was not aired on television
because, it was, fortunately, in a videotaped replay segment that it happened. But when
the camera came back in the arena and Jim Ross was trying to cover basically for why
there was no action going on and that there was somewhat of a pall over the proceedings,
and he didn't know exactly what had happened so he was trying to choose his words carefully,
I knew instantly that something was wrong, but we didn't know exactly until sometime
afterwards what exactly had happened. That was, you know Owen, I just said guys
can get hurt. They're risking their lives, but that was completely unnecessary. It was
something that Owen was doing, that he was not comfortable with, that he was asked to
do. Still to this day I blame Vince Russo, like
a lot of people do, because for those who don't know, Owen, instead of being able to
do a normal entrance into the ring and have a wrestling match, which is dangerous enough,
they decided that he would make a superhero entrance and be lowered into the ring in this
outlandish costume that Russo had booked him to be in and was being lowered by a rigging
company that didn't check the rigging or whatever and there were lawsuits, etc. etc. But he
fell a hundred feet from the roof of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City into the ring and was
killed. Owen was a great wrestler and Owen didn't
need all that hoo‑ha around him, but Vince Russo didn't feel that he was exciting enough
as himself and wanted to make him a superhero, and came up with the idea of doing that. Owen
wasn't comfortable with it, but he had already turned down a few things that he wasn't comfortable
with, and he didn't want to be Negative Nancy and be known as the guy who kept saying 'no',
so he went along with it, and it didn't turn out well.
That's one of the many things that I blame Vince Russo for, for spoiling the wrestling
business, not only for the people in it, but for the people who like to watch it.
Richard: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. No, there's a lot of wrestling fans, including myself,
that agree with you, when it comes to staying on the topic of Vince Russo. I don't know
if you've ever heard of this, you seem like a guy who's open to conspiracy theories, and
I've heard this in passing. Do you think it's possible that Vince Russo was sent by Vince
to WCW to try to bring it down purposely from within?
Jim: I would love to say that that's the case, but I can say without fear of contradiction
that it wasn't, because what you had there was basically Vince Russo conning the folks
that were running WCW, into thinking he was responsible for the WWF's success.
What you saw of Vince Russo's work in WCW was Vince Russo actually doing what he thought
was best, without having Vince McMahon to rein him in and filter him and cut out some
of the horse ***. While I would love to think it's a massive
conspiracy theory, and that nobody could be that inept while they were trying, the sad
fact is that no, that was Vince Russo's best work that he was trying to give them and they
were stupid enough to fall for it. Richard: That just boggles my mind, obviously
I think in a lot of aspects if it hadn't been for Russo going into WCW, they might still
be around today. Who knows? Jim: There was a lot more mismanagement
involved in WCW than just Vince Russo's historically biblical proportion, bad booking. Eric Bischoff
was spending money like a drunken sailor because he hit on a formula that caught on, and he
didn't know how to capitalize on it. The NWO invasion, an invasion angle always
works. They used to call him ATM Eric, because he signed a bunch of guys to contracts that
were massively inflated and if business ever went down, which after a two year hot period
it did, it would sink the company, but he wasn't smart enough to realize that.
He gave out a lot of money. He mismanaged the company to where they didn't even know...sometimes
when they would go on the air for a three hour television program, they didn't know
what was going to happen in hours two and three, when hour one was starting. It was
all done on the fly. There was mismanagement involved.
Turner Broadcasting never knew what they had bought. They didn't know the people that were
running it, whether they knew what they were doing or not.
It was just a massive fiasco, they owned the wrestling company from 1998 until 2001. They
had two profitable years, I believe which were 1997 and 1998. In the last year of their
ownership they lost 60 million dollars, which is an historic money loss for a wrestling
promotion in history. They didn't make a dime worth of profit from 1988 until 1996 because
of the people they hired to manage the company. I would like to say it's all Vince Russo because
I hate Vince Russo so bad, but no, it was Eric Bischoff and it was the Turner Broadcasting
officials that didn't know what they bought. There were a lot of people that had a hand
in kicking that dead horse. Richard: That's for damn sure. I've heard
this in passing, that apparently Hogan would get X amount of percentages of every pay‑per‑view,
even ones that he wasn't even on. If that's true, then it's no wonder that WCW...
Jim: I don't know about that, but I do know that they gave him such a tremendous merchandise
deal, that every time they sold a Hulk Hogan t‑shirt, they actually lost money. [laughs]
It would've been better if they'd have set a merchandise table up in the bathroom somewhere.
They would've come out ahead than actually selling the stuff out front.
Once again, that was an example of people buying... every time that a corporate business
gets into professional wrestling and we've seen it with Turner Broadcasting, we've seen
it with Panda Energy, we've seen it with Sinclair Broadcasting in Ring of Honor. Every time
a corporate business gets involved in professional wrestling, even if they have people that mean
well trying to advise them, they don't understand show business, they don't get show business
and eventually they *** it up. Richard: That's right.
Jim: Unfortunately now you can't have wrestling on any type of profitable level or any type
of mainstream level without having corporate ownership or network TV ownership, because
the game has been changed by Vince McMahon. He's the only one that's been able to make
it work and be profitable, because he wasn't bought by a corporation that was outside the
wrestling business. He built his own and expanded his own but
it was always at the core owned by a wrestling promotion and run by a wrestling promotion.
That's the only way to be successful, because I've found that business people don't get
show business. They might do the canned goods business good, but they don't do show business
good. Richard: That's right. When you talk about
WCW, when that AOL Time Warner merger, it seemed like from what a lot of people in the
industry said, they didn't even want to be associated with professional wrestling.
Jim: No, and the idiots at the time they were looking for somebody to buy the company,
and I believe the guy's name was Jamie Kellner, but they put a guy in charge after the AOL‑Time
Warner merger with Turner Broadcasting. They put a guy in charge of the networks that hated
wrestling so bad that instead of keeping it on the air until they found someone to buy
it, which they could probably have done so for $10 or $20 million, they canceled the
television programs just to get it off the air.
As a result, without a television program on the air, the company was worth nothing
and Vince McMahon was able to buy it at fire‑sale prices just for the video library. They cost
themselves probably $15 million, conservatively, just by canceling the program before they
found somebody to buy it. Richard: To me, that's mind‑boggling,
because... Jim: What's $15 million to AOL, Time Warner
and Turner Broadcasting? It's like you and me saying well instead of going to Subway
today, we'll go to Red Lobster and splurge, what's an extra $30.
Richard: That's true, you do have a point there, with companies like that, that clearly
make billions and billions of dollars per year, $15 million is a pretty small amount.
Jim: That's like when Sinclair Broadcasting owns 140‑something television stations,
they're worth a billion dollars, at least on paper, and we had the office manager calling
us up to complain when one of the talents bought a Greyhound bus ticket to get to the
TV taping when Hurricane Sandy came through and the public transportation was sidelined
in the New York and New Jersey area. The guy called up and said, "hey, was this
expense approved ahead of time?" I said it's a *** bus ticket. No *** bus ticket,
you idiot. Richard: Wow. That's...
Jim: But they're Republicans, so you know where.
Richard: [laughs] Staying on the topic of WCW, we've been talking about that for the
past couple of minutes. You were with WCW from its inception in 1988, till about 1990.
You left shortly after Halloween Havoc. Now, what...for some wrestling fans may not know
what that situation was, what was the deal behind that?
Jim: You can read the entire long, sordid saga in the Midnight Express scrapbook available
at jimcornett.com, but in short...they hired a guy in 1989 to run the company named Jim
Hurd. Jim Hurd's complete wrestling background had been that he was once a station director
at KPLR‑TV in St. Louis when Sam Muchnick did his wrestling program in the 60's. That
was back in the days when they didn't smarten up the TV crews, so he didn't even know whether
wrestling was a word or not. He had been a Pizza Hut executive, but his
wife was friends with the wife of the guy that worked for Turner Broadcasting that was
in charge of the wrestling company, so they hired him to run it because of his wrestling
background. He was the guy who ran Rick Flair off, he's the guy who ran the Road Warriors
off, he's the guy who...ran a lot of top talent off because of his bombastic management approach,
his complete lack of understanding of anything about wrestling, and his just basic rudeness
and disrespect in the way he treated people involved.
We had quit one time before, then we had been brought back when a new booking regime came
in and overruled Hurd and outvoted him, he said all right, go ahead. Then, when he handed
us our contracts, the first words he said out of his mouth were, "you know I was against
this," I said, "yeah, we were too," and we stayed another year and we were being disrespected
and we were just sick and fed up and the company was losing money and nobody was coming to
the matches, and we were being beaten into powder.
We just decided we'd rather be home than work for this *** prick. It just came to a
head one day when we had come off of a several day tour on the road, landed in Charlotte
where we lived, and instead of being able to go home, immediately drove to Andersen,
South Carolina to do a TV taping where they hadn't bothered to tell us that not only was
Stan Lane only wrestling one single match, and I was only managing him in that, but that
Bobby Eaton wasn't even wrestling at all. Instead of being able to spend a day with
his family, he had to go to Andersen and sit with us because he was in the car with us.
Then, we went to Atlanta to the TV taping and found out we were wrestling four matches
in one night and we were going to get beaten in all four. [laughs]
We said why couldn't we have done two of these matches the day beforehand, where at least
we could have split it up a bit, since it's all on tape anyway.
Ole Anderson, who I've made up with since then, I respect to the great talent of the
business, "You know what, Gordon? If you don't like it, go home."
I said, "You know what Ole, that's the best idea that you've ever had, that's exactly
where I am going." I walked down the hallway to ask Stanley for the keys to his car so
I could get my bags out, go rent a car, and go home. He said, "Where are you going?" I
said, "I am going *** home." He said, "You know what, I'll go with you."
[laughter] Jim: We had a quick meeting with Bobby,
because Bobby had three kids which we did not, he was making a six figure income as
we were too but he needed it more. We said, "There's no hard feelings if you stay," Stan
and I got in the car, and went home to Charlotte, that was the end of that.
Richard: Jim Herd never attempted to contact you to try to make it right?
Jim: He sent me a letter which is actually reproduced in the Midnight Express book saying
that we understand that there was a misunderstanding between you and the booker, if you return
and make your scheduled commitments, there will be no punitive action.
I called him back and said, "I ain't coming back to work for you, ever again." Because
I don't like you and you've turned the business into a clown show, you can either send me
a release or I can do what I am going to do anyway; and you can sue me.
They sent me a release, and that was the end of that.
Richard: Looking back at the history of WCW, I racked my brains trying to figure out
why a company decided to take control over professional wrestling promotion out of the
hands of people actually in the industry. Jim: In the Midnight Express book, it's
documented, we were drawing tremendous gates and crowds in the latter part of 1988. We
sold out the Richmond Colosseum, with 12,000 people, we were doing pretty decent business
in most places. Within six months after Turner Broadcasting
took over, we were running Greensboro, North Carolina in front of less than a 1,000 people.
It just plummeted, the bottom fell out of business, and as a result, all the stars that
were being highly paid; myself, The Midnight Express, The Road Warriors, Ric Flair, those
guys, we were highly paid because we had drawn the money, but through no fault of our own,
Suddenly we weren't drawing any money. They decided it was our fault, and ran off
all the stars. [laughs] That may be a good place to leave Kayfabe Kickout Audio for Part
One of this. My podcast is The Jim Cornette Experience, every week on MLW Radio, you can
go to the website and get a link to that as well.
If you are in the United Kingdom, I am coming in February, it is a Corny in the UK, the
Jim Cornette Experience Live, retirement is very busy for me, unfortunately...
Thanks for having me on the program, and I encourage your listeners to keep listening
because we need more Kayfabe Kickout. Richard: That's right. Thanks very much
for doing Part one of this fantastic interview, Jim. Just like Jim said, you can check out
his official website jimcornette.com you can check him out on MLW Radio. Go to his site
for all the latest Jim Cornette news. That was part one, wrestling fans. For fantastic
interview with the legend Jim Cornette, stay tuned for part two which will drop in the
New Year once we get things ironed out to do part two with Jim Cornette.
You can check out the official website of Kayfabe Kickout Audio, that kayfabekickout.com,
we always the latest wrestling news from the WWE, TNA, ROH, and more. We have a lot of
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going to do it for this fantastic edition of Kayfabe Kickout Audio for December 21st
2013, Merry Christmas everyone, I will be back with a brand new episode of Kayfabe Kickout
Audio. Stay tuned wrestling fans and have a fantastic weekend.