Jim Cornette finds relief away from pro wrestling

Jim Cornette is no longer in the professional wrestling business.

“And I’m so happy about that,” Cornette said.

At age 53 and almost three years into his retirement from professional wrestling, the former manager and booker (person in charge of organizing matches and outcomes) wants nothing to do with today’s televised product from the likes of World Wrestling Entertainment and Impact Wrestling.

Cornette, who started out in the pro wrestling at age 14 as a photographer for the weekly wrestling shows at the Louisville Gardens, said that the business has become unrecognizable from what it was when he started out, referring to the current product as “sports entertainment.”

“It used to be guys simulating a physical conflict with a resolution that people bought tickets to see,” Cornette said. “Now it’s talented athletes engaging in a choreographed, simulated contest that everybody knows is to be taken as entertainment. That’s taken the ‘oomph’ out of what a lot of us loved about the business.”

He said he blames a lot of it on the secrets of the business having been gradually leaked out on the Internet.

“Everybody knows what’s going on to the point where they’re breaking it down like it’s the latest Marvel superhero movie,” he said.

Leaving Pro Wrestling

Cornette found national acclaim as an loud-mouthed, tennis racquet-wielding evil manager for the Midnight Express tag team for Mid-South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions and World Championship Wrestling from 1983-1990. After running his own wrestling promotion, Smokey Mountain Wrestling, from 1991-1995, Cornette would go on to be a manager and booker for the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), Ohio Valley Wrestling, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor.

In November 2012, while working as the executive producer for Ring of Honor, Cornette decided he finally had enough.

He had been at odds with the management at Sinclair Broadcast Group, the broadcast media company which owns ROH, for over a year regarding how to run the company. A television taping in Belle Vernon, Pa., sent him over the edge.

The taping was held inside of an unheated ice rink in front of a very small crowd (roughly 300 fans). The final match ended around midnight, resulting in the injury of one of the wrestlers, Steve Corino.

“After spending 14 hours in this icebox I sent somebody to call the (Sinclair) office and tell them we need cash to send a guy to the hospital and that we had a man down,” Cornette said.

But everybody from the SBG office had already gone home that night, leaving Cornette to have to pay out of pocket for the ambulance and the production crew. He snapped in a shouting-filled rage.

“I told everybody there what I thought of everybody that wasn’t there,” Cornette said.

After making sure Corino made it safely to the hospital and making sure the wrestlers and television crew all went home, Cornette drove to the nearest restaurant.

“... And I ate everything on the menu,” Cornette said. “I called my wife (Stacey Cornette) and said ‘I’m coming home this week and I’m not coming back.’”

Cornette quit Ring of Honor and hasn’t returned to a full-time position in pro wrestling since.

The Jim Cornette Business

On Thursday afternoon, Jim and Stacey were playing with their black Pomeranian puppy, Harley Quinn, on the floor of his home office.

The top floor of his house, which he refers to as the “Castle Cornette,” is packed with wrestling memorabilia going all the way back to the 1930s. Every inch of the walls is covered with posters, wrestling outfits and framed pictures autographed by wrestling legends like Lou Thesz and Buddy Rogers. Shelves are packed with bound books of old wrestling programs. A 5,000-plus tape library with every format from Betamax to DVDs outlines a long hallway along with stacked boxes of classic comics (Jim pulled out the 1963 issue “The Avengers” No. 1 from one of the boxes on a whim). It’s enough to make any wrestling fan’s – or nerd in general – head spin.

“Come to daddy,” Jim said to the puppy as he crouched down on the floor. He smiled ear-to-ear as Harley jumped around him, even though she managed to nip him in the face at one point.

“Oh, you got me” Jim said as he rolled to his back while Stacey laughed.

For a man that became famous for his loud, angry rants and his contemptuous backstage relationships with creative team members at WWF, TNA and ROH, Cornette now seems happier than ever now that he’s out of pro wrestling. His wife agrees.

“Honestly there were times where he would be so distraught, coming home from whatever promotion he was with at the time,” Stacey Cornette said. “There were times where I thought he had a stroke, things like that.”

Moving forward

Since leaving ROH, Cornette has become a seller of old-school wrestling merchandise, the host of “The Jim Cornette Experience” podcast and “Back to the Territories” video commentary series, a magazine columnist for Fighting Spirit Magazine and an author of two books, “The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary Scrapbook” and “Rags, Paper & Pins: The Merchandising of Memphis Wrestling.”

He is currently finishing up his third book, which will be a look back at the history of professional wrestling at the famous Louisville Gardens arena.

“Apparently I’m in the Jim Cornette business instead of the wrestling business, because part of it is related to wrestling, but part of it’s not,” Cornette said.

Cornette also tours comic and wrestling conventions in the area to sell his merchandise and interact with fans. He and Stacey attended FandomFest at the Kentucky International Convention Center on Aug. 7-9.

“I love being here as a fan, and I generally go home with a lot of stuff to add to the collection, and at the same time it’s a chance to talk to people,” Cornette said at the convention. “There’s a lot of crossover between comic fans, wrestling fans and pop culture fans. It’s a chance to nerd out.”

Cornette said his merchandise, which includes posters, programs and wrestling tapes, attracts fans of old-school wrestling who, like him, aren’t interested in today’s product.

“There are two different worlds (of wrestling fans),” Cornette said. “Like my books ... they may not appeal to the current WWF (E) fan that’s wearing a John Cena shirt, but they appeal to the disaffected fans who remember and now have a little disposable income because they’re middle aged.”

Those same fans also listen to his podcast, where he and co-host Alice Radley discuss almost everything except current professional wrestling.

“There’s a segment of the population that always liked hearing me cut promos on wrestling,” Cornette said. “Well now that I’m somewhat away from wrestling and don’t participate due to the state of it, they like to hear me cut promos on everybody, whether it be politicians, celebrities or just things that piss me off.”

And even though Cornette keeps himself incredibly busy, he doesn’t think of any of it as work.

“There are people out there digging ditches,” Cornette said. “So how can this be considered work?”