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The first of these is Jim Cornette, who was given his walking papers from TNA earlier this week. I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that TNA wasted a major opportunity to take advantage of what Cornette could have done with them. We’re talking about a guy who has done everything in the business from being a performer as a manager, a TV commentator, an on-screen commissioner, a booker, and even ran his own company at one point. The best part about it is that in spite of his misgivings about his time in WWE, he still had a huge passion for the business, but for whatever reason they chose to only use him as a figurehead commissioner, and I think that was a huge, huge waste.
It’s no secret that ever since the Jarrett/Mantel/Russo booking team came together, there have been a lot of people who have been unhappy with the direction they’ve taken TNA, and have felt that if Cornette were put in charge, he could bring TNA away from being the goofy WWE knockoff they perceived it as and turning it back into a more serious, athletically focused product. Though people who say that Cornette’s style of wrestling wouldn’t sell in the year 2009 may not be totally off track, I think that he would book a product that makes a lot more sense than what they do now, and the focus would shift from the backstage promos and long interviews back to the action in the ring. Also, I have no doubt that Cornette would be able to not make most of his roster look like idiots half the time.
But even if you didn’t want to give him the book and just wanted to keep him as an on-air performer, there was so much more TNA could have gotten out of him than they did because unlike a wrestler whose body will wear down over the course of a 25 year career, Cornette relies on his mind and is every bit as sharp and quick witted as he ever was. He was completely neutered as the TNA Commissioner and instead of the Cornette that a lot of us grew up watching, we got a Jim Cornette who was eternally frustrated, overwhelmed, and often unable to contain the wrestlers he was supposed to be in charge of. Not since Bobby Heenan went to be an announcer in WCW has such a great wrestling mind and mouth been utterly wasted.
So the Commissioner thing wasn’t ideal, how about making him a manager again? Cornette is one of the greates mouthpieces in the history of the business and has done a terrific job of leading guys like Bobby Eaton and Yokozuna to the top of the business and doing all their promos for them without any of them ever having to say a word. He would have been the perfect manager to get a guy like Bobby Roode, who looks great in the ring but doesn’t have the promo skills to match, over the hump. If you’re really convinced that Samoa Joe shouldn’t be talking and needs an “advisor†to guide him, who would be more perfect for the role than Cornette, who had almost the exact same role with Yokozuna 15 years earlier? I’d take Cornette over Taz in that role any day.
In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that I’d take Cornette over Taz in the announce booth as well. Everyone has their opinion on Don West, but the general consensus is that TNA broadcasts have become a lot easier to get through without Don in the announce booth, and that Taz has returned the TNA announce team to being an actual wrestling announce team instead of the QVC hype team Don West had made it. No offense to Taz, who was easily the second best announcer in WWE behind Jim Ross, but Cornette has a much history in the business and a much longer track record of finding some way to get just about anything over. He spent more than enough time in the announce booth for WWE, the NWA, and OVW over the years that he’s accumulated at least as much commentary experience as Taz. But the best part of making him an announcer is that he knows how to sell you on a show, be it a live event or PPV or whatever, and make you feel like you have to see it without beating you over the head like Don West did as if he was back shilling baseball cards on QVC.
But they didn’t do any of that, they took one of the greatest minds in the business and completely wasted it. Yes, I know Cornette can be abrasive if he doesn’t agree with what’s being done with the product he’s a part of, but this is wrestling and there are a lot of people in the business who can be a pain in the ass. In fact, most of the really brilliant people in the world in general are guys who are confident that their way is right and everyone else is wrong, are usually right about that, and don’t take kindly to others disregarding their way of doing things. Just look around the wrestling business at some of the great minds: Cornette, Heyman, Watts, and even Vince McMahon were all very successful for a very long time by doing things their way and none of them suffered fools lightly.
But in the end, Cornette is out of a job and sadly, I feel like the business has passed him by through no fault of his own, and not because of him being out of touch, but because the people who run TNA are convinced that Cornette is outdated and would stand in the way of them taking their company in the fresh, hip direction they want to take it. I think that’s all well and good, and the same way it takes a stupid, inexperienced kid screwing up and landing themselves in hot water before they realize they should have taken their parents’ advice, I think that even if they won’t admit it, TNA is going to find themselves in a lot of situations in the future where they’ll wish they had listened to Jim Cornette.
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In news that was not generally received very positively, it was made official this past week that Ric Flair would be getting in the ring and wrestling for the first time since Wrestlemania 24 when he takes on Hulk Hogan as a part of the Hulkamania Tour in Australia this coming November. There’s a lot of people who are upset because Flair got a once in a lifetime retirement ceremony, and the fact that he’s getting back in the ring isn’t sitting well with a large portion of the online fanbase, and for a variety of reasons.
The first is the obvious: Flair’s retirement was treated with a great deal of respect and circumstance, and was something unlike anything that had ever been done before in the business and probably anything we’ll ever see again. People feel that by returning to the ring, especially after only about a year and a half, Flair is taking everything his retirement meant and flushing it down the toilet. Others are upset because they expect that he’ll return to the ring for the sole purpose of being Hogan’s job boy. Still others feel that it’s just sad that the guy is in such bad financial shape that he needs to do this in order to make ends meet.
I know this is going to get me some angry emails, but I’m not going to begrudge Flair for wrestling on this tour because the circumstances are unique. It’s not like he’s back on TV wrestling every week on Raw, and it’s not like he’s working matches for some two bit indy promotion. For one, he’s wrestling Hulk Hogan, and for two it’s going to be in Australia, and I’m not saying that wrestling in another country justifies doing the match in and of itself, but there are other factors to consider by doing the match internationally. For one, Australia’s a beautiful place, and being that Flair is retirement age, I don’t hold it against him that he has the freedom to go somewhere nice and make a working vacation out of it.
But also, even though the match may have been beaten into the ground in the United States, and even though both guys are well past their prime, there are still a lot of foreign countries where those two are as legendary as they’ve ever been, and there are places where Hogan vs Flair can still draw as a huge match and make a ton of money. If Flair has the opportunity to basically make a ton of money by going on vacation and working a couple of matches that not all, but a lot of fans back home are never even going to know about, I don’t see the problem.
As for cheapening the sanctity of the retirement, let’s first remember that this is the wrestling business we’re talking about and no retirement is ever really final unless someone’s just too physically broken down to keep going. Let’s not forget that a very large group of online fans expected that Flair would eventually get back in the ring almost from the second Michaels stuck his foot down Flair’s throat at Wrestlemania. There was talk of the Japan tour which didn’t exactly sit well with some fans, but there was also the expectation that he would come out of retirement to team with Reid every now and then, and people generally seemed okay with that. So you’re telling me that breaking his retirement is okay as long as we say it’s okay? I don’t buy that, retirement is an abstract concept that wrestling fans and sports fans in general take way too seriously.
In Flair’s case, regardless of how he got himself into the situation, he unfortunately needs to continue making a living at an advanced age. While I don’t think ripping off Ring Of Honor is the most professional way of doing so, he’s going about it any way he can because he’s got three ex-wives and two childrens’ legal fees to cover, as well as his notoriously lavish lifestyle. Let’s frame this in a more everyday context: say your father is a plumber and retires once he hits his early 60s, but because he’s been married and divorced three times and you and your dope fiend brother need him to pay for your legal fees to keep you out of jail, not to mention that he still insists on going out and living beyond his means, he needs to go back to snaking drains and crawling around in rat-infested basements. Are you going to say “Oh, that poor guy…it sucks that he’s got to work at his age, but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta doâ€, or are you going to say “Damn that guy, he said he was going to retire and we took him out to this really nice dinner with all his friends and even made three DVD sets of his greatest pipe assemblies, but now he’s crapping all over everything we did for him by going back to work. I should have known he really didn’t mean it.†Doesn’t this scenario seem a little different when you put it into a context us common folks can relate to?
Besides, retirement just isn’t for some people. My stepfather has tried the retirement thing more than once, but he gets crazy staying home and he keeps going back to work because that’s what he’s been doing all his life and it’s just too ingrained in who he is for him to suddenly stop because he hit a certain age. I doubt Flair’s any different, he’s been in wrestling for a long, long time and it’s not easy to just turn it off, especially when you get as deeply into the lifestyle as Flair did.
If I had to bet money on Flair’s future, I would bet that he never does get out of the financial hole he’s in. I think he’s too used to his lifestyle to really change now, and he’s well past the point where he’ll be able to earn enough to ever pay off his debt. It’s unfortunate, but Flair is in all likelihood going to turn out to be another in a long line of cautionary tales of what the wrestling lifestyle can result in. He is also a walking advertisement to Jim Ross’ number one tip to all up and coming wrestlers: save your money now because you never know when it’s going to come to an end.
But if Flair is going to get back in the ring, at least he’s going somewhere exotic where he can enjoy himself. After all, isn’t that what retirement is all about?
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The final topic I’d like to cover today is Kurt Angle, who was cleared of three of the four charges he faced stemming from issues he had with ex-girlfriend Trenesha Biggers, aka Rhaka Khan. He was able to provide a valid prescription for the HGH the cops found in his car, was cleared of driving with a suspended license since the appeal regarding the suspension is still pending, and he was also cleared of the harassment charge. He still faces a charge of assault against Biggers, but without any concrete evidence of the assault taking place, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Angle will be found guilty on that charge, either.
This has to come as a huge relief to people at TNA, who came under a lot of fire for letting Kurt wrestle on PPV just days after the arrest, and even moreso for keeping the title on him in the face of potential jailtime and also in the face of what could have been some very bad press for the company had he been found guilty. To be fair though, in our legal system you are innocent until proven guilty, and TNA decided to take a wait and see position before making any rash moves based simply on the arrest. Turns out that was a good plan since everything Angle said following the arrest has turned out to be true so far.
Kurt Angle has unfortunately become one of those performers who can do no right in the eyes of the internet fans. Either he’s holding people down, or he doesn’t belong in the ring because of injuries, or he doesn’t belong in wrestling because people think he’s a sleaze in his personal life, or any number of other things. Because of this, the moment word got out that Angle had been arrested, everyone automatically assumed that he was guilty and he was just lying to save face with everything he said afterward. I guess that’s how you know you’ve become a star in the wrestling business: when every fan on the internet turns on you and finds the wrong in every move you make, you’ve really made it.
I’ll admit, I was as dubious as anyone about the possibility of Angle truly having clean hands on this one given what a whack job he’s come off as at other times, but I can also admit that I was proven wrong and in the future will think twice before automatically making assumptions about a wrestler’s innocence or guilt when faced with situations like the one Angle found himself in.
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Before I go, I’d just like to offer my condolences to the family of Mick Foley, whose father Jack passed away recently. Mick wrote about his father extensively in his first autobiography, and it’s clear that Jack not only had a great influence on the life of his own son, but many of the kids to come through Mick’s high school, at which he was the Athletic Director and even had the high school gym named after him. It’s never easy losing a loved one, but losing a parent really sucks and I hope the entire Foley family is doing well.
Stu Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
