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Kayfabe! Breaking Kayfabe with Jim Cornette

January 9, 2014 | Posted by Mike Campbell
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Kayfabe! Breaking Kayfabe with Jim Cornette  

KAYFABE!
Breaking Kayfabe with Jim Cornette

There isn’t much surprise here. The Jim Cornette release winds up being the best entry in the small library of ‘Breaking Kayfabe’ releases. Just like the other good editions, it helps that Jim gets specific things to talk about, rather than just a general “Let’s talk about Jim Cornette” sort of interview. But, then again, it’s Cornette. It’s been well documented that he can read stereo instructions and be entertaining, and this is no exception.

For a Jim Cornette interview, this is awfully short, it clocks in at a little bit under three hours, so it’s Jim being brief. There are only three basic subjects covered. Jim’s falling out with KC last year, the full story of Jim and TNA going sideways, and Jim’s falling out with Sinclair Broadcasting and ROH, which pretty much ended his active role in the business. It also has the standard ending of Sean asking Jim the usual five questions, but they’re pretty much just tacked on, after we get through the meat of the interview.

The Jim/KC and Jim/TNA stories are actually pretty brief, and really aren’t anything earth shattering to anyone who doesn’t already know the basics of them. Jim fully admits that he overreacted with the KC issue, and that he was already pissed off because of ROH bullshit, when he saw the trailer for Russo’s youshoot, and he overreacted. Being that Jim is now doing this interview, obviously they patched things up. He goes into more details over the whole fiasco with TNA, and Sean mentions that during Cornette’s Guest Booker interview, he’d mentioned that he and Russo were actually OK, because he’d stopped taking things so seriously. Jim says that was true during that interview, but then Russo’s ego went out of control again and Jim remembered why he hated him so damn much. The one really good nugget in the TNA section is the story of when Jeff Jarrett was sent home, and Jeff pulled Jim aside and asked him to try and keep Russo in check for the good of the company, otherwise Russo would get out of control.

The bulk of the interview is Jim talking about the trials and tribulations of working with ROH after the Sinclair sale. It’s funny, in an ironic way, that Jim commented in his YouShoot that WWE and TNA were owned by corporate assholes, but ROH was run by nice people. Well, ROH was purchased by Sinclair Broadcasting, and they became corporate assholes too! The main source of the venom is an individual known as “Greg the office boy” who was a kid of the accounting department who was put in charge of the ROH office, and didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. But, not only did he not realize that he didn’t know, he thought he knew everything, and was a huge prick to everyone. Most of the things that Jim had envisioned when putting the sale together were either changed drastically, or just left by the wayside. He wound up alienating a good chunk of the existing ROH fanbase by not running in ROH’s proven markets, and then jacking up ticket prices. The website was designed by his college buddies, and had all sorts of problems. Rather than broadcasting ROH’s iPPV shows on ROHWrestling.com, and keeping the money for themselves, they stuck with Go Fight Live, despite their shining reputation.

Despite his constant pleading left and right, Jim was ignored. Because he was the figurehead authority figure, a lot of the ROH fans were blaming him for all of the problems that he had nothing to do with, and was actively trying to fix and/or prevent.. That’s part of why Cornette did the angle with Jay Lethal to write him off TV, and replace him with Nigel McGuinness, but he stayed on in a backstage role. But, things finally became too much for him, and after a shot in the Pittsburgh area he said that he was about as far away from Louisville as he was Baltimore, so he was just going to go home. A few people begged him not to, so he went to Baltimore, and then it was decided that they would part ways. That’s pretty much the cliff’s notes version, but Jim goes into much more detail in his usual colorful manner.

The 411: The only real surprising this here is how long it took before ROH under Sinclair drove Jim crazy. But this is the usual great interview with Cornette.
411 Elite Award
Final Score:  10.0   [ Virtually Perfect ]  legend

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