Episode 11 - Cornette Returns

Timestamps
 0:00:00 - Preamble 

TGBL: Scott Teal told us a story-

Bix: Well it was off air, yes

TGBL: He said that Don Fargo– he was upset that he hadn’t gotten in touch with us before we recorded the Mongolian Stomper tribute episode because he thought it was important that we get out there that Don Fargo said that “sitting next to the Mongolian Stomper was like sitting next to the Human Quaalude.” (laughs)

 0:05:23 – 21 st  anniversary of Eddie Gilbert’s passing and memories of him in the 70’s and 80’s 

Cornette: I understand when you’re a booker and you care about your product, you get cranky with people when they start fucking with it. This was well after he had parted ways with “Happy Heyman”, you know, when Paul E. kinda jacked him out of the ECW thing. I just told him, I said “Eddie, I don’t care who gets the credit for this as long as we draw some money so I really want you to take a hands-on approach with your own angle and whatever we do here, please feel free – pitch ideas, come up with shit, you know, we will do it.” I’m not gonna be stingy about that, I want you to feel good about what you’re doing – so we had that understanding and he made 1 TV, so we didn’t go far enough that it became, you know, an issue; ‘course then to be quite honest, the way I found out that he took the book in Puerto Rico was when I found out he was booking in Puerto Rico – he never actually called me and told me he was never coming back! But you know, that’s the one thing – I wish he’d stayed in Knoxville because you can’t get into as many things in Knoxville as you could in Puerto Rico and things may have been different.

- on Eddie's previous behavior in WCW for getting in trouble with the office for running his own angles and how Jim tried approaching it when it came to Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

 0:34:36– Tape Trading follow-up 

Cornette: I wasn’t worried about quality at that point because it was better than what we’d had before which was nothing. If you think about it – I’m getting a tape of wrestling outside of my area 3 months after I’d ever had a VCR in my home; it was like “my god, this is incredible. I can tape TV programs in my house.” That’s unheard of – who’d the fuck have thought of that? People today didn’t understand what that’s like so I didn’t care how the quality it was – the same guy from Detroit sent me a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark when it was barely out of theatres, but it had actually been taped by guy and a camera in the back row – you’d imagine what that looked like. As far as – I’m sure I’ve burned people too just not meaning to, just by “aw shit, you sent me two I only sent you one or I forgot to send” – it was a loose thing; it wasn’t really that orchestrated yet. You were just glad to get anything: once again, fuck. When I first got cable, I was like “shit, there’s 35 fucking stations on this thing now because I’d only had 4 before!” (laughing) It wasn’t like you were picking at knits in those days.

- Jim on if he'd ever gotten burned by other traders in tape-trading, or if his tapes were ever misrepresented by anyone else.

 0:50:41– Jim’s thoughts on the Poffo family and ICW 

Cornette: Oh, we loved it – me and Bolin both, we loved it. I lost a few of those tapes because I gave them to – back in the days before I had two VCR’s and couldn’t make copies – I gave them to Christine Jarrett and she wanted to take them back in case they had a lawsuit, they wanted the evidence. When it was on Channel 62 in Lexington, I couldn’t see it, but if I went to Bolin’s house up in LaGrange, KY – and we took his battery operated black and white twelve inch TV that he’d gotten from western auto – when he went in there he was the 10,000th; he went in to return something for his mother and he ended up being the 10,000th customer and won a battery operated television – first time he’d ever walked in there in his life, fucking Bolin, right? But we would take it up on his roof and boy, sometimes it was cold – that’s where the cops tried to get us one time because we were so covered up in these jackets and warm-up hats and it was so cold when we were trying to watch wrestling – the cops thought we were trying to break into the building from the roof. Anyway! We came down because there like “come down from there” and they’re like “oh it’s you guys! What are you doing up there?” “What do you think we’re doing on the roof? We’re watching wrestling on TV!”

- on watching ICW and seeing Randy Savage cutting promos on Memphis wrestlers, and the lengths him and Kenny Bolin had to go to see it.

Bix: I have in front of me – I saved a scan that I had found online of one of their charity challenge ads to the Memphis guys. So there’s a $30,000 Triple Charity challenge – I think it’s Savage challenging Lawler, Valiant, Jarrett and Dundee. "If they win – Lawler, Valiant, Jarrett and Dundee will receive a total of $15,000 plus an additional $15,000 will be given to United Cerebral Palsy; it’s against Garvin, Orton and Roop. Also, Ronnie Garvin, Bob Orton and Bob Roop promise to shave their heads in the ring and never wrestle again for the rest of their lives. If Lawler, Valiant and Dundee lose, ICW will pay $4000 consolation prize to the United Cerebral Palsy fund for their transportation expenses to and from Rupp Arena, plus any hospitalization and or psychiatric expenses related to the May 20th humiliation. If Lawler, Valiant and Jarrett do not show up, they will receive NOTHING and United Cerebral Palsy will receive NOTHING-"

Cornette: Nothing! The kids will get nothing!

Bix: "Some people care more about their own health than the health of those afflicted with Cerebral Palsy. Remember, superheros – you have nothing to lose but a bucket of yellow paint, a chicken, a diaper, and a baby bottle.”

Cornette: Every once in a while, it was a Ham Sandwich too...They had really high quality matches and good work in that studio – their booking was just horrible because I think all of them were on fucking drugs at the time and shit didn’t make any sense and it would look so outlaw. They spent so much time talking about Jarrett’s guys and challenging Jarrett’s guys, you know, they’d take out these big ads that they couldn’t afford in the Lexington paper: “Randy Savages challenges 3 on 1 handicap match: Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jarrett and Tojo Yamamoto – just bring a ham sandwich against 100,000 dollars.” Well even back then when people weren’t smart that much, nobody believed that these rag-tag band of ragamuffins had 100,000 dollars, so it was automatically garbage! That’s the famous quote from Sputnik Monroe: Jerry Jarrett was sitting in the locker room one time in Memphis and they were all talking about these outlaws over there spending all their time challenging Jarrett’s top talents instead of worrying about getting their own guys over, and Jerry said “I just don’t understand how stupid people think,” and Sputnik jumped up and said “Hell, Jerry, I’ll tell you how stupid people think!” and then realized what he’d done to himself (laughs) and then sat back down!

- on the ludicrous and absurd lengths that ICW would take to get constant attention from Memphis to sell their show to the fans.

 1:01:58 – Discussion on Iron Sheik’s Plea Video by Mickey Sherman and Law Enforcement's involvement in Wrestling (as a benefit or hindrance.) 

 1:15:01 – Dennis Of The Week 

Cornette: Dennis and Starmaker made their acquaintance to each other, and it seemed that – Dennis, for some reason every time he got around Kenny, he was very unlucky in that he would always lose a credit card, and for some reason whenever Kenny got around Dennis, he would get lucky and would always find it. I believe some of this – as I believe – may be detailed in Starmaker Bolin’s book... anyway, what would happen is that back in those days before this instantaneous computer business got going, you had a little time on these lost credit cards (laughing) and somehow, Kenny would know that not only was this card lost, but it wasn’t going to be reported for 24 hours, and as a result, Bolin ended up with tons of audio and video equipment and the Coralluzzo children ended up with nice clothes, and toys, and just everybody just had a good ol’ time and then these cards were reported stolen and of course they were cancelled, but by that time someone had fraudulently made purchases, and that pretty much went on until Dennis’ death because I think finally at one point some people came to see Dennis and were looking for a few items they’d found in Dennis’ house, but you’ll have to have Starmaker on sometime to give you more information but after that, he was more careful with his possessions after that and didn’t lose as many thing after that.

 1:23:40 – Wigs in Wrestling and the question – “Did Stan Lane ever wear a wig?” 

Cornette: ...We’re at a high school gym – and as he opened the door I’d seen him walking in. the sunlight is behind him so all I’d seen is a silhouette and it looked like he was wearing…it appeared to be a coon-skin cap, and as I got closer I said “what the fuck have you got-“ He’d gone to New Jersey – and I love you, Stan – to this hair clinic and had gotten a hairpiece sewn to his scalp – installed if you will – on top of his head. I said “what the fuck” because he was getting a little thin on top but today – this was 20 years later, more than 20 years later – today he looks great, he’s got as much hair as I do. I said “Stan, can you work with that thing on?” and he said “well, we’ll find out” and come to find out he was so sensitive about it we had to do the old Mongolian Stomper thing and he wore headgear – the amateur wrestling headgear – and we’d did the Stomper thing where "he’s got an inner ear problem, don’t make noise!" And the people would scream and yell and he’d hold his ears, but really, the headgear was to hold his fucking hairpiece on, which looked like an opossum! Finally, after a couple of months, Tom and I go to meet Stan at his hotel and we pick him up, we’re going to a show in West Virginia and he comes out with a Baseball cap on and he had that look on his face, and he sits down in the car in the passenger seat and he looked at us and he whipped the hat off – you know what grass looks like when you’ve laid a piece of carpet on it for a while? His existing hair had not been bleached because it was under that thing and was all matted down to his head – he looked 50. I said, “Stan, what the fuck?” and he’d come in the night before, even with that headgear, a few of the stitches came loose and it was that deal where he’d wrinkle his forehead up and his head would move and the hair wouldn’t or vice versa, and he took his cuticle scissors in the mirror of a Super 8 motel and just cut the fucking thing off.

 1:36:05- Live watch of Rock ‘n’ Roll Roy Toy and Godbold w/ Jim Cornette  Cornette: Now who was the other video I watched – was that Pibe Diez?

TGBL: El Pibe Diez.

Cornette: Yes! He just became Ricky Steamboat.

- on the subject of Rock 'n' Roll Roy Toy and the tremendous match video accompaniment.