Andrew Lutzke
Presented by Kayfabe Commentaries: Jim Cornette NWA 1989
Hosted by Sean Oliver
Cornette shows off a HUGE bundle of papers that document ratings, attendance and tons of other notes from the period.
We start with the history of the Bunkhouse Stampede Battle Royals and how they tended to be a good drawing card once a year. The biggest pain of this gimmick for the guys was that they had to bring extra gear to change into for the “bunkhouse” aspect of the gimmick.
Corny won a manager battle royal at the beginning of the year. Jim liked when he worked with the Fantastics or America’s Team (Magnum TA/Rhodes/Baby Doll) but this match wasn’t his idea of a great draw or cosmetic bout.
The Midnight Express vs. Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson co-headlined house shows with Flair vs. Luger on top and drew big money – even bigger than the Great American Bash tours only a few weeks earlier.
When Anderson and Blanchard quit the Express needed new opponents and Corny convinced Rhodes to bring in Dennis Condrey and Randy Rose. They debuted by beating Corny into a bloody mess.
Rhodes got fired as booker and suddenly the Midnight Express vs. Midnight Express feud got less TV time and was pushed down the card. The new bosses decided Paul Heyman and Corny were not going to work house shows in order to save money, so the main heat getters in the feud weren’t there for the fans to play off.
The Express were being paid $225,000 a year each. They signed their big deal right before the Crockett’s realized they were bankrupt.
Turner’s bean counters weren’t happy with the size of those contracts since they were the highest paid non-headliners on the roster.
Jim Crockett was given the booker job after Rhodes was fired. The first thing he did was tell Cornette that he (Crockett) didn’t know how to book.
Randy Rose’s work wasn’t liked by Crockett and he tried to get rid of him soon after. This led to Condrey quitting the NWA since his teammate was being messed with. Rose stayed.
George Scott came in to book and he had never seen the Midnight Express work. He ignored them in the booking plans thereafter.
Rhodes had planned on booking a lot of shows in Texas to take advantage of the office buildings they bought there from Bill Watts in the later part of 1987. With that plan in the works, the Western States Heritage title was created. It stayed around for about a year, but was largely unpushed.
Jim Herd was named Vice President of the NWA. He ran a TV station where he directed the “Wrestling at the Chase” TV show in the late 60’s. This was the reason he was named the head of Turner’s new wrasslin’ organization.
Eaton and Arn Anderson hung out during the night time. Stan Lane went elsewhere to seek pussy. Cornette went to a hotel room and ate pizza.
Corny loved Rhodes’ booking and he understood why Rhodes left instead of trying to stay on as just a headline talent.
Ricky Steamboat debuted in late January. George Scott had been booking Mid-Atlantic in the 70’s when Steamboat became a star there, so bringing him back seemed like a great idea.
JJ Dillon jumped to the WWF to work in the office. Corny and JJ had a lot of fun cutting promos on each other during their team’s brief feud.
Hiro Matsuda took over Dillon’s charges in the NWA. Cornette rips on George Scott for booking guys way past their prime.
Tony Schiavone quit after Jim Ross was named WCW’s lead announcer.
Cornette explains how the Road Warriors were born to be babyfaces. The key to them drawing was finding small weasley opponents who the fans wanted to see the Warriors kill. Them facing monsters didn’t have the same appeal.
Eventually the Warriors winning all the time actually began to hurt them because they were too dominant and the fans didn’t buy anyone beating them.
The Warriors changed the booking on their way out of WCW in 1990 and put the Midnight Express over 1-2-3 at a house show.
At the Chi-Town Rumble PPV the NWA sent out Kendall Windham for a match after the PPV went off the air. Since everybody was cleaning up and getting ready to leave the match was forgotten about and it was 25 minutes later when somebody finally remembered to call the thing off.
Iron Sheik was brought in because George Scott liked him a decade earlier. Corny saw Sheiky as a fat guy in his mid-40s who could no longer work. Sheik was sent home after a few weeks. He got paid six-figures to sit at home. A year later they forgot to fire him and thus had to pay him another $100,000. They brought him in to do some jobs at that point but he was so bad that they just sent him away again.
Paul Jones was a stooge for the Crocketts and thus had immunity. He ended up as a manager after his career wrapped up, then he was an agent.
Missy Hyatt was dragged away by Rick Steiner at a TV taping. She decided not to wear underwear that day and Steiner accidentally exposed her woman parts to the world.
The Great Muta debuted in February. Muta did so many cool moves that he had a hard time getting heat since the fans loved his flashy offense. His mist came from food coloring that was held in a condom.
Corny tried the condom gimmick in ROH but today’s condoms are tougher and it led to one guy swallowing it and another guy who couldn’t bite through.
Stan Lane and Ric Flair would compete over who had the lowest heart rate.
The house shows began to struggle to draw because the suits didn’t really use care in planning or promoting events.
WCW booked a TV taping at Center Stage Theater in 1990 not realizing the building was being remodeled and all the seats had been taken out. The wrestlers all showed up before the error was realized.
The Superdome was booked for Steamboat vs. Flair at the Clash. George Scott decided he didn’t want the NWA to push it and ruin potential house show money for rematches. The result was a bad Clash rating and 65,000 empty seats.
Fatu and Samu gobbled up the Midnight Express in their matches. Corny believed the office told the SWAT Team to not sell because they had no plans for the Express.
George Scott was fired after the Clash mess and replaced by a booking committee.
The Express quit over Scott burying them. After Scott was canned, Jim Ross made a personal push to bring them back.
Corny met up with Jim Herd to work out a new contract. Herd offered them $75,000 each, with Cornette getting 25K extra for doing color commentary. He and Herd went back and forth for weeks over the money. They finally settled on 125K for Stan and Bobby but he gave Corny 150K, which was 50K more than Cornette even asked for.
Jim explains that racist promos were okay since the heels were just trying to get heat.
JR was the mastermind behind the Dynamic Dudes. Corny rips on the gimmick and Johnny Ace. Jim Herd didn’t like the gimmick either.
Cornette never watched the WWF TV shows or PPVs because they had silly gimmicks and crappy matches.
Nikita Koloff was well off fiscally even before he got into wrestling. He would wait months to cash his JCP checks and they had to scold him for screwing up their bookkeeping.
Terry Funk was working hurt during his run in 89. He had injuries as severe as a broken tailbone and still never missed a shot.
Michael Hayes believed he was going to get on the booking team and planned on making the Freebirds the main heels in the NWA. Jimmy Garvin was on roids in an effort to bulk up. The Freebirds didn’t want to sell either, since they envisioned themselves as no selling bad asses. Hayes even told Corny he wouldn’t sell racquet shots.
The Freebirds were facing Dr. Death Steve Williams one night, doing their no selling bit and attacking the babyfaces more than what had been planned. This finally set Doc off and he attacked Jim Garvin with a chair, swinging time and time again as Garvin swore and protested before racing to the back.
The Freebirds (with Terry Gordy) and Dr. Death and The Midnight Express had a confrontation in the locker room after that incident. Only the normally quiet Eaton going off verbally on the Birds seemed to calm the situation down before it came to blows.
The Great American Bash tour bombed again in the summer of ’89. Corny runs down the brutally small money amounts they drew in this series.
Jim Herd creating the infamous Ding Dongs is mentioned, which gives Corny a chance to rant about the dumb gimmicks Herd proposed.
Lex Luger wasn’t a wrestling fan. He got a huge payday right away in his career, which prevented him from quitting early in his run.
Corny wrecked his already messed up knee by jumping off a ring apron the night before he was to face Paul Heyman at the Bash PPV. Corny ended up wrapping his knee ultra tight and loading up on pain pills.
Heyman screwed up what knee he was suppose to attack right away but overall the match went well, even with both guys throwing some accidental potato shots.
Ricky Steamboat’s “family man” gimmick didn’t get him over like he probably should have been, so when he tried to get a new contract in the middle of summer Steamboat found himself unemployed. Corny goes off on Steamboat’s wife’s mettling.
Ric Flair asks to become booker to try and salvage the promotion after the dismal summer ratings and attendance.
Flair and Eddie Gilbert never got along. Gilbert wanted to book a Memphis-style promotion. Gilbert used his power as part of the booking committee to switch a house show finish from Ron Simmons beating Gilbert to Gilbert winning.
The Skyscrapers (Sid Vicious and Dan Spivey) gave the Midnight Express the worst matches of their career around the fall of 89.
Corny always wanted to bring in Louie Spicolli as Bobby Eaton’s younger brother.
Ric Flair wanted to cut live promos at TV tapings but Herd wanted very few promos. Herd then used Jim Ross as the middle man between he and Flair to keep the heat off himself.
Cornette defends the angle where Terry Funk tried to kill Ric Flair by wrapping a plastic bag around his head. People at home complained and the Turner suits scolded the bookers. Another sign of corporate heads wrecking wrestling,
Paul Heyman cut a promo with comments slyly aimed toward “smart marks”. Flair got so pissed that Heyman had gone so far from the planned promo that he fired Heyman immediately.
In October the Turner heads declared that violent verbal threats or attacks were banned. The booking committee and Herd fought constantly at this point.
The Midnight Express got denied feuds with every team except the Dynamic Dudes since Herd didn’t like either team and let them do their little angle.
Ole Anderson was brought in because he was well known to the fans and he could cut a whale of a promo.
Corny’s mom loved a vignette he did simulating ejaculating while interviewing Woman over champagne.
DOOM debuted as a team and pounded down the Steiners. The fact that Woman managed them had nothing to do with their race.
Terry Funk wasn’t asked before Herd put him in a retirement match with Flair.
The Midnight Express turned heel on the Dynamic Dudes but the fans cheered because the Dudes were hated, the taping was in a northern city with more jaded fans and the smart marks saw this as a chance for the Midnight Express to return to ass kickers.
Ric Flair vs. Bobby Eaton on a Sunday TBS show drew the highest NWA TV rating for a Sunday NWA show in over a year. Herd was pissed that Flair was working with a tag wrestler and not going over clean.
Tully Blanchard failed a WWF drug test and ended up having his proposed NWA contract rescinded by Herd. Corny begged to Herd to send Tully to rehab or whatever it took to get him back on their TV. Ole Anderson had to come back to in the ring action to replace Tully.
The “Iron Man” concept for Starrcade wasn’t well received by Cornette. He doesn’t know who came up with the plan.
The Roos tennis shoe company wanted to pay the NWA to have Ric Flair and others wrestle in their footwear.
Cactus Jack debuted late in the year. Corny and Sullivan knew him from seeing him working the territories. Jack didn’t have a contract at first but Sullivan and Cornette brought him in as a “jobber” but then had him attack his jabroni partners in order to get himself over. Eventually they were able to get him a real contract.
Corny set up an angle where he ended up in a match with Shane Douglas. Before the match Douglas told Jim he wouldn’t sell for any of the Memphis gimmicky stuff like powder in the eyes or whatever. Douglas ultimately went along with it because the bookers forced his hand.
Douglas whined to Herd and got the angle/match removed from the TV show. They taped a new angle where Douglas got to work with Stan Lane instead. The original angle was suppose to lead to the Dudes beating the Express in matches where Cornette would be forced to face the babyfaces if his team lost. Since Shane fucked up the plans the Express just beat the Dudes every night as the blow off.
The Rock and Roll Express were set to come back in early 1990 and Corny figured they had the opening to have great matches again.
Flair vs. Brian Pillman drew the best TV rating in 3 years in early 1990. Then the next night Flair and Arn faced the Rock and Roll Express on the Sunday show and drew the biggest rating in 5 years. Despite ratings improving, Herd still bitched about things all the time and Flair quit as booker.
Then in May 1990 the Midnight Express were planning on leaving again and Herd told them he didn’t want them in WCW and yet the booking committee voted to resign them.
Final thoughts: It’s Jim Cornette, you know what your going to get. Hilarious bile at bad booking, some old school love, random great rants and so on. I love the guy and if you do too, then you’ll enjoy this video. It clocks it at almost almost 3 1/2 hours!
