The professional wrestler is a die-hard showman.
The same person who was once determined never to reveal the dark old secrets of the business or betray the code of brotherhood in the sanctity of the locker room quickly realized that if she opened up about her life in the business in gory, detailed detail, someone would pay her a tidy sum. While there were hardly any secrets left to keep at this point, it’s still funny. The change in attitude was beyond stark; the real-life version of a charitable hero suddenly becomes a cowardly and less talented wrestler just because the script demands it.
In their defense, these wrestlers were getting on in years and there were few other ways to make money due to WWE’s recent monopolization of the industry.
And so the shooting interview scene emerged in the 2000s.
The route was, well, it was insane. These people – often relics of a crazy 1980s era – were not media savvy. They had little awareness of the norms and values of the outside world and often portrayed abhorrent behavior, even outright crime, as hysterical street stories.
The shoot became the podcast, but the controversy simply shifted to another platform…
If you haven’t seen the shoot, you’ve almost certainly seen the GIF.
It’s Jim Cornette, incredulous and rage-struck at Vince Russo’s idiotic creativity. The man looks so stunned that his mouth twists in an unnatural direction.
Shot in 2000, the film is a blistering, unrelenting, 45-minute rant. Cornette’s seething hatred of Russo was as much a source of energy for him as it was sustenance. Cornette accused Russo of sabotaging his career, ruining the business, and ignoring his kids’ baseball games to kiss Vince McMahon’s ass.
This shoot defined the industry – ironically, it was the venerable Cornette who did it, but they’re all showmen – and it sparked the longest feud in pro wrestling history. Cornette vs. Russo, which narrowly beat out Miro and Kip Sabian Vs. Best Friends and eventually included death threats, was also the most believable.
A lot of the language hasn’t aged well at all, not that that’s a problem for him, but it’s understandable why Cornette was able to make this kind of thing his full-time job.
The rhythm and wit of his tirade was hypnotic. Lines like the following also helped a lot:
“They brought Ed Ferrara from California because he wrote ‘Duckman’ once, I don’t fucking know. Maybe he fucked Duckman once, maybe he Was “Duckman.”
