http://www.jimcornette.com/Commentary.html
As the kids say, this is made of win. I do have to take exception to his bit about restholds, though. Yeah, if it’s a 20 minute match and someone grabs a chinlock to take a breather, no problem. But when you’ve got guys chinlocking each other in a tag match after 2 minutes because they’re already blown up, it’s a resthold.
But yeah, the rest is so very true.
Cornette just sounds like a whiner this time.
If wrestlers have to pay their own travel expenses, they should be able to eat and sleep wherever they want.
I usually agree with Cornette’s line of reasoning, but I have to beg to differ here.
Living your gimmick is a big reason why people die young, broke and penniless in the pro wrestling business. Seriously, Steve Austin couldn’t just be Steven Williams at home, and it wrecked two marriages. Chris Jericho, on the other hand, can apparently turn it off and be Chris Irvine, husband and father, when he’s not in the ring. Same goes for Mick Foley, apparently, though his wife seems to have a lot to do with that.
And there are certainly enough marks in the world left — look at Jericho’s car incident from earlier this year where he got mobbed by a bunch of idiots in Canada. Is that supposed to be a ringing endorsement for the old days? Is the time-honored tradition from the 50’s of popping a guy’s eye out and stomping it while in a bar fight (according to Have a Nice Day, that is — Mick never saw it but did hear stories about it happening) just to “prove” that a fake sport is real? If that’s what Cornette is being nostalgic about it, he’s full of shit — I know I’m not the only guy that thinks it’s fucking hypocritical to go to such outrageous lengths to present the show as a sport. (Again, see Foley. Who oddly enough is a friend of Jim’s and a co-worker at the moment.)
And what’s this about how it’s impossible to play a character not like yourself and be able to sell your facial expressions? I’ve seen plenty of Improv actors pull it off. You do have to live in your character while the red light is on, and probably warm up and cool down on each end, but it’s possible.
Seriously, though, as I’ve said time and again, maybe Russo was right to stop treating it like a legitimate sport — but he totally flunked lunch in the execution of this idea, because he kept on breaking kayfabe IN THE GODDAMN SHOW, which is the only place kayfabe should still exist, from gates-open to last-paying-customer-leaving… that, and maybe most of the website for a promotion, but they seriously should all have behind-the-scenes sections that admit it’s all show business. Like, you know, everyone else in show business.
The conclusion I’m building toward, and I do have one, is that McMahon and Russo have to both figure out that they’re in a strange sort of limbo, where they’re playing by old-school rules (universal kayfabe) when the old-school conditions (fan ignorance of the truth of the system) no longer exist, and they finally have to adjust.
And unlike Jim, I’m acknowledging that this IS just my opinion.
I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said and I can’t believe Jim would write that article. I know it’s his opinion and all; but does he realize he works for TNA?? They do some of the worst things and are the biggest violators of actions that ruin immersion. Too many gimmick matches, too many spot matches, too many short matches, etc, etc, etc. If he feels this strong, he should resign and go work for ROH or something.
I wish Jim would attack in ring wrestling more and the lack of psychology. This has harmed wrestling a lot more than “breaking kayfabe” in my opinion. Having to wrestle a designated style is assinine. (i’m looking at you WWE) Also, the lack of either the WWE or Jim’s beloved TNA ability to elevate talent is pathetic. As bad as WWE has been, at least in the last 4 years we have Edge, Cena (i’m including him), Orton and now Punk…who has TNA elevated? Joe? AJ? I think not.
I will say this, as soon as he talked about “rest holds”, the king of rest holds Randy Orton jumped in my brain…lol. Watch his matches, he can’t get to a chinlock fast enough. Jesus Randy, give it a break.
I wonder if Cornette ever really understands why the territory system was going broke. All Vince had to do was kick the door in and the whole rotten structure fell in.
I have wondered for the last three years why TNA doesn’t make Cornette it’s booker. His attitude is a little extreme, but I think he’d book a very sensible, straight-forward show and guys would GET OVER and sell tickets, which is kind of the point.
TNA doesn’t sell tickets. They give them away for free at an amusement park (and sometimes in mid-sized arenas across the country — seriously, they couldn’t sell half the seats in the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton last summer?!)
So Cornette spends the entire rant hammering home how wrestling needs to be respected in terms of trying to maintain believability, and then at the very end states, “It doesn’t matter that UFC is real and pro wrestling isn’t.”
Plus he rants against the idea of scripts and characters, yet uses words like “performer” and “show.”
And if the term “dressing room” holds a negative connotation, why was it used “inside wrestling” in the 1st place?
I respect Cornette on a lot of levels, but his “rules” for wrestling – at the least the way he presents them – come across as making for a very unhealthy lifestyle, mentally and emotionally. And instead of coming across as impassioned, he really just comes across as a drama queen, reaching Bret Hart levels in terms of “it’s more real than you could possibly imagine.”
Er, did you actually read it, or just skim over the top?
If two guys inside the business have a conversation without the Smark element present, they could say “script” or whatever, but to speak openly about it is wrong. We all know that Obiwan was Ewan Mcgregor, but if say during a conversation with Yoda, Obiwan started talking about the script or made an inside joke about Trainspotting it would suck. That’s what Russo never got. Sure, be open about it, but not to the point where it becomes “spot the reference”. In an interview in a magazine a few years ago Cornette also went on about how Stephanie was once supposed to look fearful in an angle but laughed and basically flushed the angle down the shitter. Basically, yeah, we all know it’s scripted, but if they keep saying “It’s scripted! This is a show, just like Days of our Lives!” all the time what’s the point?
As far as restholds go, I can clearly remember as a kid going to show, and seeing one guy chinlock the other guy. Back then it was a sense of “Oh my God, he’s suffocating the life out of him, can he escape, or will he pass out?” Even after more than five minutes! And it was not so long ago that a sleeper or even a bearhug was viewed as a potential finisher. But again we’ve been trained that unless it’s an Official Finisher TM, then the guy’s not gonna submit. So the only move people would submit to cena with will be the STFU. If Cena does say a sharpshooter it’s essentially killing time. Nobody would submit to a Samoa Joe Figure-4, but the Kokina Clutch is deadly etc. So any hold other than the guy’s designated finisher automatically becomes a resthold, and elicits “boring!” chants. That’s why i think guys should have a finishing Move, but not a finishing Hold.
No, I read it and I’ve re-read it. My point is that Cornette contradicts himself a number of times, and really in the end he’s picking nits. It reminds me of Buck in Boogie Nights: “I’m not a porn star, I’m an actor!!!”
And seriously, re: the whole “heels and faces never socialized in public” thing: That might work on a local level, but since wrestling is international now, you’d basically be forcing wrestlers to live the “gimmick” 24/7, lest someone, somewhere see something they shouldn’t.
Cornettte expresses what many of us probably feel, that wrestling truly is “a unique…artform,” but you can only control so much of it. Jeff Jarrett’s wonderful quote “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary, and for those who don’t believe, no explanation is good enough” sums everything up perfectly. It’s all about suspension of disbelief. In this day and age, you can’t force it on anyone, and like I said, while I respect Cornette on a lot of levels, he takes the idea too far (at least in terms of how he presents it).
And in the big picture, here’s a guy who has strong beliefs about the sanctity of kayfabe, how when outsiders are exposed to it it loses its luster and can be bastardized, and how it needs to be treated as legitimate….openly writing about “the business” (not “the sport”) on the internet, for all outsiders to see.
Irony, so damn ironic, etc etc etc.
I agree that Cornette does go a bit overboard, but nonetheless, the gist of what he said is true. yes, we know it’s a work. But for the whole show to be tongue-in-cheek kills off any interest many people had.
I disagree with Cornette about all the people being total marks back in the day. Even as a kid I knew it wasn’t “on the level”, but watched religiously as the wrestlers, managers, anouncers etc. all acted like it was 100% legit. When “Attitude” came in, and people kept making “winkwink” comments, it was fun at first, but has been disastrous in the long run.
I think someone on the Observer wrote a great article a few years ago. One point was that when we watch say a horror movie, we know that the werewolf isn’t real, but if the movie’s properly made, we can suspend disbelief and for that moment it is real. However, if we keep seeing how fake it is, we laugh at it. In wrestling, ANYTHING can be made to be real if the people involved in the making act like it is so. But these days WWE go out of their way to tell us how fake and silly it all is. So why should we watch?
Yeah but after the filming of Episode 1 Ray Park (Maul) and Ewin could go have a beer together and no one would care
I’m from Indiana, and my Uncle used to go to wrestling matches growing up. He’s told me he’d watch Dick the Bruiser or Bobby Heenan beat the shit out of some guy, then they’d see them at the bar after the match having a beer and “yukkin it up”. This was in the 60-70s, so I don’t know if a promotion would really fire somebody “on the spot” if that happened back then, like Jim said. Maybe in SWM or something, i don’t know. It seems like that’s always been a guideline more than a scrict rule (until recently of course).
Bret Hart mentions in his book about not riding with Owen or being seen with him while they fueded. Even when they HAD to be near each other, they’d still make faces at each other to work the fans anyway. I doubt he did this with every guy he wrestled though, like Skinner or Hakushi. (This also makes me belive that Montreal is a work. Bret is just an old-school guy who works everybody, which is why Shawn’s all “bury the hatchet”, and Bret’s all “I’ll walk out if I see Shawn” cause Shawn, along with Hunter, have replaced “kayfabe” with thier own form of sports entertainment)And I disagree that the portion of fans who believe its real and never miss a match are completely gone. From what I’ve seen, most kids under 14 believe it’s 100% real, and aren’t they the majority who watch wrestling these days?
While I respect Jim’s passion and have always been a huge fan of his work, the bottom line is that Pandora’s Box has been open for years now and there’s no turning back. I do believe there are elements of his rant that can be applied to the current product, but the business and the world have changed for good. Much of what worked in the 80s wouldn’t fly today, to Jim’s chagrin and to my own as well.
Scott, didn’t you point out the difference between gimmicks and characters in one of your mid-90s rants, Lazarus or King Lear? That TL Hopper, Isaac Yankem and Duke Droese were gimmicks, and failed, where Mankind and Goldust were characters, and succeeded?
I agree with some of what Cornette said, in terms of guys talking about what their characters would do, but some of this is definitely off, particularly, as Scott noted, the resthold stuff…
Cornette will always be bitter even if the product was amazing… if he can’t whing he won’t be happy.
Cornette should watch Smackdown and SD only if he isn’t happy because the wrestling and story telling is pretty epic at the moment.
Somebody tell Jimmy it’s not 1982 any more.
As stated above, Chris Jericho clearly plays a “character” and is one of the few reasons to be interested in today’s stale product.
Heck, the biggest success story in wrestling history, Dwayne Johnson, also played a “character”. Hearing Dwayne talk and listening to other people talk about him, it’s clear that he’s just a humble and down to earth guy. A far cry from the “character” he played.
Surprised you agree with Cornette, Scott. Weren’t you the one who said “gimmick’s sell t-shirts, characters sell tickets”?
Not only that, but Rock also took acting lessons, didn’t he?
Turned out pretty good for him.
Cornette sounds like an old man refusing to embrace a changing business. Not that there’s anything wrong in that.
The stuff about what wrestlers call aspects of wrestling doesn’t matter to the business. You can call it backstage, dressing room, locker room, whatever…it doesn’t affect how you draw. The kayfabe stuff outside of the arena…I think that’s already out of the bag…its not like seeing a heel and a face in an IHOP is going to prevent you from being a fan.
But Cornette did hit the nail on the head with my biggest gripe with pro wrestling today…the product needs to be presented as a shoot during the show. Kayfabe should be alive when the WWE is on TV…they want to break it on WWE.com or in newspaper articles…fine…but they should present it as a shoot during the show. Thats the thing thats annoyed me about wrestling for the past 10 years, bring the real life into things, shooting, blah blah blah, it ruins the belief.
Cornette brought up Rocky…well as you’re watching the fight scenes, you get into it, you believe that fight is actually happening and you want Rocky to win. It doesn’t matter in 20 minutes you’ll be saying…man Stallone is awesome…in the moment, its Rocky. That’s what the WWE & TNA have lost….there are very few times that I get lost in matches. On the flip side…thanks to the strict adherance to kayfabe, I can still get into wrestling matches on 24/7 from the 80s and early 90s even if I know way too much of the backstory because its presented as a shoot.
That’s pro wrestling’s biggest problem. Not whether the guys have gimmicks or characters. Note to Jim: They’re the same damn thing.
Now if that’s Jimmy’s primary point, then I do have to agree — crap, I actually remember (of all matches)DDP versus Goldberg at Havoc ‘98 as being a match that made me forget that no way in hell is Bischoff going to have Goldberg lose his streak before Starrcade … when DDP reversed the Jackhammer into a Diamond Cutter, the shout of “PIN HIM!” was beyond stereo in my living room. (I wonder how many people consider that Page AND Bill’s best match ever?)
He just keeps on about the old conditions so long that I’m not sure if he realizes what it was about the old days that actually works today. Like I said, call it showbiz left right and center, except from 9 to 11, where you focus on TWO GUYS FIGHTING for a reason WE CAN UNDERSTAND with RULES we can understand, and all of us will be tuning in. But Vince and Vince aren’t doing that.
Re the restholds, I don’t mind if a headlock or chinlock is applied after a few minutes but the most important thing is that it’s sold as painful hold. When wrestlers do it now, it does look like they’re just having a break. Bret-Bulldog did LOTS of chinlocks at Summerslam 92 but they both used facial expressions to show it was hurting and so you really believed they were being worn down. I remember watching an MVP match a while ago where he was in a headlock but he was kicking his feet and wriggling because it hurt so much. In that case, ‘restholds’ are fine.
Totally agree with what has mostly been said here.
Football is silly. I love football, but it’s silly. Grown men on a field essentially playing “smear the queer.”
The thing is, the NFL would never, assuming the Commissioner was in his right mind, admit or allow someone else to admit that football was a silly endeavour on TV or in a newspaper article, or on the Internet. Could you imagine Tom Brady or Tony Romo going live on ESPN and treating football in general, and the NFL in particular, like a joke? They’d be fined out the ass before they knew what hit them.
Wrestling has got to be the only form of sports or entertainment that allows themselves to be treated as a joke, by treating themselves as a joke! I know Vince has his insecurities about being a mere “rasslin promoter,” but maybe if he allowed wrestling to be taken a little more seriously on his own TV shows, other media would treat the WWE a little more respectfully.