Kayfabe! - Timeline The History Of The WWE 1997 As Told By Jim Cornette

Posted by Mike Campbell on 09.01.2011

Who else but "The Louisville Slugger" could take us through such a turbulent year for the WWE?

KAYFABE!
TIMELINE: THE HISTORY OF THE WWE 1997 AS TOLD BY JIM CORNETTE

1997 was a very important year for the WWF. The rise of Austin, all the stuff with Shawn and Bret which led up to Montreal, the ECW Invasion, the WWF finally moving in the right direction after WCW was beating the pants off them in the Monday Night Wars. And is there a better person to take us through such a big year for the company than Jim Cornette? The format is the same as previous Timelines, with Sean and Jim in the studio. We're treated a graphic screen which gives a date and a particular occurrence, then we cut to Sean and Jim in the studio while Cornette talks about it (and tends to veer off into another direction).

One recurring topic throughout the DVD is Shawn Michaels. Cornette isn't exactly fond of him or his personality, but does give him props for her talent inside the ring. One thing he mentions is that the original plan for the WWF Title from '96 to '97 was Shawn over Vader at Summerslam, Vader over Shawn at Survivor Series, and then Shawn winning it back in his hometown at the Royal Rumble. Well, Shawn got pissy about Vader working so stiff with him, which was nothing more than Vader being Vader, so that got nixed in favor of Sid winning the title. There was also a plan for Vader to rough up Jose Lothario with Shawn being distraught (like when Mick passes away before Rocky fights Clubber Lang in Rocky III) that never materialized thanks to Vader getting turfed from the angle.

Cornette is also more than a bit skeptical about Shawn's knee injury and the loss of his smile. He fondly remembers the Shawn/Bret fight because of how crazy it was. Shawn stormed into Vince's office with a big chunk of hair in his hand ranting about how he was leaving and this was an unsafe working environment. Vince ran off to try to calm him down, while Cornette actually stole the hair and gave it to his (now ex) wife. A few months later, the WWF would run an angle were Pillman refused to work a match on Raw because it wasn't a safe working environment, in a not-so-subtle dig at Shawn. Of course, there's Montreal. Cornette thought the whole thing was FUBAR. Cornette figured SOMETHING screwy was going to happen for the finish, the morning of the show he asked Vince if he had a finish set up. Vince said he did, and Jim said that was all he needed to know. When the bell rang, Cornette jumped up and was gone. He beat Hebner out of the arena.

He's equally critical of Bret for his part in forcing Vince's hand as well. He thinks Bret took himself and his status as a Canadian hero way too seriously. He doesn’t deny that Bret is a Canadian hero, but it's not exactly a huge list to begin with. Cornette would have respected Bret much more if he'd just flat out said "Shawn Michaels is a prick and I don't want to put him over." He also can't believe that Bret actually called all the newspapers and said that he never actually LOST the title. He gave Vince tons of publicity over it, and he never mentioned now he never actually WON his titles because it was someone else putting him over. Jim doesn’t think Vince is blameless either. He feels like Vince's had WAS forced, but Vince should have thought to take the title off Bret BEFORE he freed him up to negociate with Bischoff. JR also made Cornette call Mick Foley and get him to come back. He respected Mick’s morals, but summed up the situation to Micky by saying “A promoter screwed one of the boys. That’s like being upset because Jenna Jameson takes one up the ass.”

Another popular subject is Cornette's favorite verbal punching bag, Vince Russo, since 1997 was the year he came into power. Cornette didn't have any serious heat with him at that point though. Russo's rise to power came after a horrible Raw (which everyone warned Vince would be horrible, but he wouldn't listen). They played a house show from Germany on TV and did live play by play. Vince was mad the next day because it did a lousy rating and decided that they were going to go with Russo, because he'd been saying that they needed to get more reality based. Cornette had been telling Vince the same thing ever since he joined the WWF full time. But he meant to just get away from silly gimmicks and cartoon characters and let them be wrestlers.

Cornette actually liked Russo at first, they both seemed to be fully aware that Russo didn't have a wrestling mind and Jim was trying to help him, but after a while it was clear that Russo wasn't listening and had no desire to actually learn anything, so Jim washed his hands of it. Jim tells a story about Kane's debut, which was one of Jim's favorite ideas he's had. He came up with Hell in Cell, combining the War Games cage with the roof, and the old Memphis cage that surrounded the ring. Kane's debut was a takeoff of how Doug Furnas debuted in Knoxville, by ripping the door off the cage. Vince decided he wanted Kane vs Taker for 'Mania, five months away. Russo wanted to have Kane chokeslam UT through the announce table the next night. Jim told him that it was too soon, they had five months to go. Russo's answer "Well we can do something else later." Jim was removed from creative toward the end of the year, which he was fine with, because he was sick to death of Russo by then. Vince was taking two of Russo's 100 idea and tweaking them so they'd work, but Jim was hearing the other 98 of them and wanting to kill himself and/or Russo.

Another target is Kevin Dunn (with his usual hilarious impression). Kevin Dunn was the one who hired Michael Cole and kept pushing him to get the top announcing gigs (so you know who to program the terminator to terminate) despite them having perfectly talented announcers like Kevin Kelly already in the company, but Cole had done the news, so he was "legit." There's also the great story that KC released a video of, Jim was in a creative meeting, talking about the Patriot and they kept changing the subject. Jim was mad that day anyway because they were in Halifax, Nova Scotia for Raw and had been flown in on Saturday because it would have cost $2,000 to fly them in Sunday night as was their usual setup. He keeps trying to go back to the Patriot and Dunn tells him that he's getting tiresome and Cornette snaps back at him and threatens to drag him across the table by his buck teeth. Vince asks Jim to apologize, which he only did because Vince asked him to, and Dunn breaks down in tears because he was always made fun for his teeth. Cornette thinks that he's made enough over the years that he can afford to have them fixed.

He also illustrates how out of touch with wrestling fans that Dunn is. It was Cornette's idea to hold the ceremony at Badd Blood to honor the legends of St. Louis. Kevin Dunn thought it was a horrible idea because the WWF fans wouldn't know who Lou Thesz, Sam Muchnick, Harley, Race, etc. even were. Well, Jim got his way and didn't the legends get a standing ovation from the live crowd. One of Dunn’s few good ideas was having Bret shove down Vince and swear up a storm on a live Raw. Dunn was smart enough to not run to USA Network and get the OK for Bret to say everything he said, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Being that this is Cornette, there's no surprise that this is long. The usual Timeline release is about two hours or so, this bad boy clocks in at 3:10, and it's a very entertaining 3:10. He's got plenty of funny stories and anecdotes to share. He specifically brought his agent book with him detailing all the live events, there's a record of where they were, how many people were there, and how much they drew. This is particularly useful when talking about Vince freeing up Bret to go to WCW, because his book backs up what Vince said in Wrestling With Shadows about the WWF being in trouble, the live events at the time weren't doing that well. He also talks about how the Royal Rumble was totally built around Shawn's hometown and while it did do a good number, it wasn't what a stadium show should have drawn. Jim discusses at length the curtain call incident and HHH's part in it, as well as afterwards when he went on TV and said he wasn't sincere in his apology (which Jim already suspected). There was his one-night return to managing when he went out with the Headhunters for no good reason and they wound up getting beat in like two minutes anyway. They also talk about another case where Vince had to publicly admit that the WWF's matches were an exhibition and not a legit contest, which a lot of people got hot over, but not Jim. It wound up saving everyone a lot money. Jim tells a story about having to get licensed to wrestle in Louisiana and having to pay $100 for it. Jim was coming from Memphis, he didn't have $100, so he bullshitted the paperwork for it to save the money, and he wound up getting caught by using the name of the county coroner as the doctor who'd given him his physical. They finish up with Jim already summing up 1997 as being the setup for the record breaking year for the WWF, indirectly plugging the 1998 Timeline release.

The 411: Timeline: 1997 is interesting, informative, and entertaining. In short, it's everything you'd expect from the pairing of Kayfabe Commentaries and Jim Cornette.

Final Score:  10.0   [ Virtually Perfect ]