The Official Web Site of Pro Wrestling’s “Louisville Slugger"
If you've watched professional wrestling on TV or pay-per-view, seen it on a home video, or read about it in a book or magazine for the last 30 years, chances are you've seen something Jim Cornette did, heard something he said, or read something he wrote. For three decades, "James E." has been a fixture in the sport.
Jim Cornette was born September 17, 1961, in Louisville, Kentucky. He became a wrestling fan at the age of 9 after a chance encounter with Dick the Bruiser's TV show from Indianapolis. Hooked, he quickly found the local Louisville wrestling, the Tennessee TV tapes of promoter Nick Gulas, and began watching every televised wrestling program and reading every wrestling publication. By the age of 12, Jim began attending the weekly live events at the Louisville Gardens, with occasional trips to wrestling shows in Cincinatti and Indianapolis built around family vacations.
Too young to drive, Jim's mother Thelma took him to the matches, setting the stage for the "gimmick" that would become his entree into the sport. He began taking photos at the matches, and when he was just 14, began selling them to Christine Jarrett, the Louisville promoter, for sale at the souvenir stands. "Miss Christine" had taken a liking to the young man as Louisville's biggest fan and became friends with Jim's mother as a result.
Over the next several years, Jim's hobby both became a business, and provided him with a look at most aspects of the wrestling business itself. Christine's son, now legendary promoter Jerry Jarrett, had retired as an active wrestler to take over as promoter of the entire Memphis wrestling territory, which included Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, Memphis, Jackson and Nashville, Tennessee, Evansville, Indiana, and dozens of smaller cities and towns in between, in early 1977. Jim shot all the photos sold at the souvenir stands, wrote the articles and shot photos for the programs, and contributed photos to all the national wrestling magazines such as Wrestling News, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the Wrestler and Inside Wrestling, as well as Gong magazine in Japan. He taped promotional radio interviews with the wrestlers, served as ring announcer and timekeeper at spot shows, and got the opportunity to watch how Mrs. Jarrett, the most successful female promoter of all time, ran her shows.
"By the time I was 20 years old", JC remembers, "I was going to over 150 live events a year. I had seen over 1,000 shows in person and at least 3000 wrestling TV shows either on broadcast TV or video tape. I had 6 years experience with photography, publicity, ring announcing, even publishing my own magazine. But I had never been a performer, actually ON the card, and I didn't really expect I ever would be."
That changed in 1982, a month before Jim's 21st birthday, when Jerry Jarrett asked him if he would like to be a wrestling manager. Jarrett's idea was for Jim to be a rich, spoiled "Mama's Boy" who used his family fortune to buy his way into wrestling, a takeoff on Gary Hart's original gimmick from the 60's. Since the fans had seen Jim's mother at the matches all those years, first driving him, then later helping her friend Christine operate the souvenir tables, it helped the gimmick, but in an unexpected way.
"The people in Memphis and towns she never went to hated me AND her", JC laughs, "but in Louisville, Evansville, wherever they knew her, I had MORE heat because the fans would hate me more for being such an asshole when my mother was so nice!"
Debuting on Memphis TV on August 21, 1982, Jim learned his craft with on the job training managing such stars as Crusher Broomfield (later One Man Gang), Jesse Barr, the Exotic Adrian Street and Miss Linda, and the masked Galaxians (Danny Davis and Ken Wayne), among others. In the Summer of 1983, Jim was sent down with a crew from Tennessee to Georgia, to run the local Georgia and East Tennessee towns as a branch of Georgia Championship Wrestling. Cornette managed the Angel (Frank Morrell), Bounty Hunter Jerry Novak, King Carl Fergie and former Royal Kangaroo Norman Frederick Charles 3rd. Returning to Memphis in August, he served as the assistant manager to Jimmy Hart's First Family, understudying Hart on the small town shows and once again, getting a lot of experience by working ringside 
for most of the top stars that came through the territory.All this would be valuable when his break came in November.
Mid South Wrestling promoter Cowboy Bill Watts came to Memphis to see the talent as part of a trade agreement with Jarrett. Watts chose two Memphis veterans, Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton, to form a tag team that would soon be named the Midnight Express, and picked Jim to be their manager. Along with their rivals,
Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, the Rock & Roll Express, Watts also picked singles hero Terry Taylor and tapped Bill "Superstar" Dundee, a Memphis main eventer for years, as his booker. It proved to be one of the biggest talent acquisitions in history, as paced by the Express-Express feud and the innnovative Dundee booking ideas, Mid South Wrestling in 1984 shattered all it's box office records and had the biggest-grossing year in it's history. The Midnight Express series of matches with Watts and Junkyard Dog, dubbed "The Last Stampede", led Mid South to gross over a million dollars in a one month period, including crowds of over 23,000 fans in the New Orleans Superdome, 12,000 in Houston, and 20,000 in the same day in Oklahoma for shows in Tulsa and 
Oklahoma City. The Midnights held the Mid South Tag Title most of the year, and battled the Rock & Roll in wrestling's first tag team scaffold matches, breaking more attendance records.
In December, the Midnights headed to Dallas for World Class Wrestling and spent 6 months there in a heated rivalry with Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers, the Fantastics, including American Tag Title matches in Dallas' Reunion Arena before almost 20,000, and in Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, for the 2nd annual David Von Erich memorial event which drew a quarter of a million dollar gate. World Class Wrestling's large syndicated TV newtwork exposed the Express and Jim Cornette to a wider audience, and after gaining the interest of both Jim Crockett Promotions booker Dusty Rhodes and NWA World Champion Ric Flair, they were offered a spot in the Charlotte-based promotion, at the time the second biggest wrestling company in the country, behind only the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE).
In July 1985 they debuted on Crockett's flagship TV program, World Championship Wrestling on Superstation TBS, and were soon being
featured on 6 hours of cable and national syndication per week, and becoming top-of-the-card attractions in the NWA's wrestling war with the WWF for the next several years. Cornette was recognized as the top new manager in wrestling and won the 1985 Pro Wrestling Illustrated Manager of the Year award. The Express were in one of the feature matches at Starcade '85 in Atlanta, a Street Fight match with Jimmy Valiant and Ronnie Garvin. The event was the biggest-grossing NWA show to that point in history, drawing almost $800,000 before about 60,000 fans either live or on closed circuit.
The Midnight Express won the NWA World Tag Title from the Rock & Roll in February, 1986, on TBS' first prime time wrestling telecast, from the Omni in Atlanta, and reigned as champions for over 6 months. On Thanksgiving Night, Starcade '86, the NWA's first-ever million dollar gate, was built around their famous scaffold match with the Road Warriors. Jim is best remembered for blowing his knee ligament taking the bump from the 24 foot scaffold, as with the live and closed circuit showing,
the home video being the first gold wrestling video with sales of over 50,000, endless replays of the fall on commercials on TBS for years, and the entire match being included in the WWE Road Warriors video release a few years ago, JC says "More people have seen me fall off that scaffold than anything else I've ever done."
The Midnights were also in featured matches on the annual Great American Bash summer stadium and arena tours in the late 80's, and after Condrey left the team in 1987 and was 
replaced by Stan Lane, they were perennial United States Tag Team Champions from 1987 to 1989, also winning the PWI Tag Team of the Year award and the World Tag Title again in 1988. In early 1989, Turner Broadcasting, the new owners of WCW, hired a VP named Jim Herd who was no fan of the Express or Cornette, and while constant clashes 
with management stifled how they were used, they had two more years of classic matches with great opposing teams until Cornette and Lane walked out in November 1990. The complete story of the Midnight Express years has been documented by JC in his new book, The Midnight Express 25th anniversary Scrapbook, available on this website.
Two aspects of his tenure in WCW served Jim well in his future endeavors, however. He had his first opportunity on the creative end when Flair installed him on the WCW booking committee in 1989. Jim very much enjoyed the matchmaking and writing television but was not as high on the backstage politics, an opinion he retains to this day. He had also done a lot of color commentary on TBS telecasts, often paired with Jim Ross, who taught JC a lot about wrestling broadcasting. The two Jims would reunite as a broadcast team in the WWF in the '90's.
In 1991, with WWF business on a downswing and WCW so badly mismanaged, Cornette felt a traditional, territorial wrestling promotion with good talent and an exciting TV show could still succeed, as many traditional wrestling fans were beginning to be driven away by the "sports
entertainment" phenomenon. He got record producer Rick Rubin to give him the financial backing to give it a try.
"Smoky Mountain Wrestling", JC says, "was basically a two man operation, me and Sandy Scott, at first, and later three with Brian Hildebrand (Mark Curtis). We kept about 16 wrestlers at any given time, were backed by an eccentric genius who missed "real" wrestling like we did, and got WAY farther than we should have, given how bad the wrestling business fell in the toilet in the 90's. WCW was owned by a billionaire with
national TV and PPV and big name stars, and a lot of our house shows were outdrawing theirs in the early 90's."
With Scott, a wrestling legend and former Crockett promoter and executive, booking the arenas and tour schedule and promoting the towns, and Cornette booking the arena lineups, writing the TV's and serving as the top manager, Smoky Mountain Wrestling was launched in 1992. Based out of Knoxville, Tn., it was a 4 year rollercoaster ride.
"We always tried to have great talent, the guys who understood the style of wrestling, they
busted their asses, and the live events and TV shows were great for fans of Southern wrestling." JC remembers.
Cornette managed Lane and Dr. Tom Prichard as the Heavenly Bodies (Jimmy Del Ray took over for Lane after his retitement). The Rock & Roll Express were reunited in SMW as the Bodies' chief rivals,
and legend Bullet Bob Armstrong was a mainstay as SMW Commissioner. SMW was definitely a critical success, it's video tapes popular among wrestling fans all over the world. The TV program was a ratings success in all it's key markets, winning time slots in Knoxville and Bristol, Tn. for the entire 4 years, scoring ratings between 3's and 8's on local FOX and NBC affiliates. At the gate, major summer events in the Knoxville Civic Coliseum in 1994 and 1995 drew nearly 5,000 fans paying over $40,000 to see shows featuring the SMW stars, WWF superstars and major names on the independent scene from Dan Severn to Dory and Terry Funk.
SMW had achieved a first in 1993 when the Bodies vs. Rock & Roll match for the SMW Tag Title also appeared on Pay Per View events for both WCW and WWF--WCW's Superbrawl in February and WWF's Survivor Series in November. Bill Watts had taken over running WCW when Herd finally 
resigned, and Jim made a talent agreement with him for top SMW talent to augment the WCW PPV's while WCW talent would appear on SMW shows. When Watts left the company after Superbrawl, Cornette didn't trust anyone else in authority there and the deal was off. By Summertime, WWF had called Jim and asked if 
he and the Bodies would like to make dates for them, and the same type of talent trade was worked out there. As well, SMW became the first outside promotion ever recognized publicly on WWF television.
Cornette also became the American spokesperson for WWF Champion Yokozuna, and Summerslam 93 from the Palace of Auburn Hills saw the Bodies lose a WWF Tag Title match to hometown heroes Rick & Scott Steiner, while JC cornered for Yokozuna as he retained
the WWF Heavyweight Title over Lex Luger in the main event. In JC's first WWF PPV event, he managed in both championship matches. Wrestlemania 10 was another landmark. "My SMW work was what I loved, and the WWF work was to finance it", Jim recalls." but even I have to admit that it was really cool that the first time I ever walked into Madison Square Garden, I managed the WWF Champion in the main event at Wrestlemania." Cornette capped off 1995 winning the PWI Manager of the Year award ten years after first winning in 1985.
1995, however, was not a good year for SMW. It continued to be a critical success, and it's major events delivered at the gate, but it was the victim of a Catch 22. The cost of producing and airing the Tv show on broadcast affiliates was rising, so SMW couldn't afford to add markets. Without more TV markets, SMW couldn't run enough of those major events that brought in the big money. "We were running too many spot shows in Haysi, Va., and not enough arenas where we could draw 1500 or more fans." JC says. "But running 15 shows a month off only 4 or 5 strong
TV markets wasn't going to make it in the "wrestling recession" of the mid 90's. Even the WWF lost $6 million in 1995. I hated to, but I had to close it up in December."
Cornette accepted a job on the WWF creative team and moved to Stamford, Ct. in 1996. He continued as a manager on-air for WWF throughout the year, managing WWF Tag Champions Owen Hart and the British Bulldog, and former WCW champion Vader. He celebrated his on-air "retirement" as a manager in December 1996 by being
Tombstone-piledriven by the Undertaker on TV, to concentrate on the creative team and more color commentary in 1997. JC had already served several stints as substitute color man on RAW on USA in 1994 and 1995, and was now often working with Ross on syndicated and international programming.
"The WWF creative job was at some points a lot of fun and at many points a living Hell", JC recalls, "you will, sometimes simultaneously, love Vince and hate Vince, and sooner or later you will develop a twitch. I was glad when I got on it and glad when I got out of it. "
In 1998, Cornette returned to the air to lead a group of "disgruntled NWA legends" to assault the WWF way of life, and there was more than a little venom to some of Jim's promos about the state of the wrestling industry. His shoot "Cornette's Commentary" segment caused a lot of talk among fans and the industry alike with his sharp, pointed barbs to WCW and even WWF business practices. Leading stars like Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and NWA World Champ Dan Severn into battle with the "sports entertainers" and making caustic comments got JC a lot of attention, but by 1999 he retired from managing again to concentrate on color and working as a scout and liason for young talent and independent promoters. Cornette ended his major-league managing career as a 12 time winner of the Wrestling Observer Best Manager poll, winning the voting every year from 1984 to 1996, except 1991 where he lost to Sensational Sherri Martel.
Jim continued to do a variety of color commentary work in 1999, including co-hosting the first episode of Smackdown on the UPN network in April, with Michael Cole on play-by-play. The Cornette-Ross team was split and seldom got the chance to work together.
"The Executive Producer of WWE television", Cornette says, "Is a person who doesn't like much. He doesn't like "rasslin", as they condescendingly call it up there in the WWE. So my commentary, actually treating it like a sport, was not his favorite. He doesn't like Southern accents, so JR and I as a team were doomed, even though everybody else liked our work for ten years but this guy. I was going nuts living in the Northeast and the only part of the business I really got to enjoy at that point was scouting the young talent and working with the independent promoters on who their upcoming talent was."
The WWE had put the other territories all out of business, and now had nowhere to get talent from that had the experience of working TV and a fulltime schedule. Jim saw the opportunity to do something more rewarding than "voiceovers on international Heat", and move back down South at the same time. He met with his old friend Danny Davis, the founder of Ohio Valley Wrestling. Davis had founded OVW as a school in 1993 in Jim's hometown of Louisville, and as he expanded, he had begun running TV and live events locally.Cornette made an agreement with Jim Ross in WWE Talent Relations, to establish a WWE developmental program at OVW, and moved back to Louisville in July 1999 to partner with Davis and serve as the booker and play by play announcer.
With Cornette handling the talent, creative and TV end, and Davis overseeing the business office, the school and the production, it would prove to be a successful combination.
"I was the chef", JC laughs. "and Danny owned the restaurant. The food was great and people liked it and we made money with it, but the reason we opened and closed on time and stayed in business was that the guy that owned the restaurant did everything else."
On TV, OVW soon expanded with a Saturday 11PM slot on the powerful Louisville WB affiliate, WBKI, and became often the highest rated program on the station's Saturday schedule, beating prime time programming.OVW was never bumped or preempted from it's time slot for over eight years. Home videos of the show were popular with fans around the world. The program was presented by JC as young superstars performing realistic angles using old school pro wrestling psychology, and was called by the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer "often the best-booked hour of wrestling on TV each week from any group."
At the arenas, by June 2000 OVW entered a partnership with the local Clear Channel Radio group to bring major league wrestling shows to the Louisville Gardens. JC assembled a card mixing OVW stars with Louisville wrestling legends, and featuring WWE stars like Kane and D-Lo Brown, and the "Rockin' Rumble" drew almost 3,000 fans paying over $30,000 on June 23, 2000. The success of the first event led to a second, even bigger event in January 2001, OVW's Christmas Chaos.
That event, headlined by Kane vs.OVW star Leviathan (WWE's Batista) with manager Synn (wife Stacey) and Stone Cold Steve Austin appearing live for an interview with Jim Ross, plus Chris Benoit challenging Nick Dinsmore for the OVW Title, drew over 5,000 fans and almost $75,000, and was a high point for Jim. "My mom was here, and 27 years after she took me to my first Gardens show, she saw me book one that sold it out!" After a major show in July 2001 featuring the Undertaker that drew over $50,000, the city closed the Gardens, but OVW had been recognized as a local TV show
and wrestling school that had put together three major events in a one year period that drew more than 11,000 fans paying over $150,000 at the gate in the same building, numbers no other promotion in the country was doing short of WWE. As well, OVW ran over 125 live events a year in small gyms within a 150 mile radius of Louisville. In 2002, OVW began staging a series of live outdoor events at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, and over the past six summers they have become the park's biggest-drawing ongoing entertainment event.
The OVW Training Center began producing talent under the WWE developmental program, as well as by recruiting their own students. Many aspiring young wrestlers began to travel to OVW from across the country to be seen or signed. Since 2000, over 100 talents that have made it to the WWE or TNA rosters either broke in or trained extensively in OVW, including current WWE Superstars John Cena, Batista and Randy Orton, TNA and NBC American Gladiators star Matt Morgan, and UFC Heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. Counting merchandise sales and TV sponsorships, OVW by 2005 was one of only three profitable fulltime wrestling promotions in the country.
"Unfortunately, changes in the WWE talent relations department put people in charge that not only didn't know how wrestlers should be trained", JC says, "but also wanted us to do whatever they said without regard to how it would affect OVW's business or ability to make money, or present a semblence of a quality product. I felt we had provided them with outstanding talent for 5 years and proven ourselves as a legitimate wrestling promotion and school with a quality product. They treated us like stooges in charge of a storage closet. Needless to say we were pretty far apart in our thinking, WWE and I. Let's just say after a year of tension and 6 weeks of blowups, we had the big one and agreed not to speak to each other anymore. And my blood pressure went down."
WWE released Jim from his consultant's agreement in July 2005, and JC stepped away from creative or on air roles in OVW while retaining his partial ownership. He and WWE have not spoken or done business since then, and, he says, "probably never shall." JC sold his piece of OVW back to Davis in May 2007, and by early 2008 the WWE had screwed OVW by pulling out of a contract they had signed only several months before, sending all their talent to the ill-conceived training venture in Florida they have poured a fortune into, which was supposed to have been patterned after OVW's success. OVW continues in business running 12 to 15 live events per month, and the TV show remains a local institution.
In Fall 2004, JC began taking part in Midnight Express reunion appearances, at wrestling events and fanfests all over the country. Charlotte, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Memphis and more have seen Midnight reunion matches against the Rock & Roll Express and others, bringing back great memories for 80's fans. "In 2009", JC says, "We'll still do a few, but I only have a few more bumps left!"
Also in 2004, Cornette began doing a lot of work with Ring of Honor (ROH), the biggest and best independent promotion in the country. The promotion originally welcomed JC as a legendary manager, but his old "heel" side emerged when getting the opportunity to manage against his childhood hero Bobby Heenan on ROH events. Jim also hosted a series of video releases interviewing wrestling legends such as Heenan, J.J. Dillon, Bill Watts, Bruno Sammartino and more, and spent much of 2006 as ROH Commissioner.
In June 2006, JC joined TNA wrestling as their public face of management, and began laying the law down on TV to a new generation. His appearances on TNA Impact on Spike TV, seen weekly by almost 2 million viewers, are generally to promote a major match or announce a special stipulation, which is perfect for the Louisville Lip and his 30 years experience in selling matches. He also works in a behind the scenes capacity as a producer, enjoying working both with the younger stars and inside the production truck.
Jim also spent 2008 working on the Midnight Express Scrapbook, and after launching that, plans a series of collector's publications on classic wrestling, including an album of his photos of 70's and 80's superstars. He has begun to devote enough time to learn how to get on the internet since starting this site, and his next project is sorting and downsizing his mammoth wrestling memorabilia collection, offering everything from photos to posters, magazines to programs for sale on Cornette's Collectibles.
Still residing in Louisville, Jim and wife Stacey enjoy going to different and unique restaurants on their travels, and will write about it in the column "Now With Tomato". At home, they enjoy gourmet cooking and watching film noir. Jim watches as much UFC programming as he can to feed the "old-time wrestling fan" still in him, and lastly, he is appraising his childhood collection of over 10,000 comic books for possible auction in 2009. "I want to turn them into landscaping", he laughs.
Jim Cornette was born September 17, 1961, in Louisville, Kentucky. He became a wrestling fan at the age of 9 after a chance encounter with Dick the Bruiser's TV show from Indianapolis. Hooked, he quickly found the local Louisville wrestling, the Tennessee TV tapes of promoter Nick Gulas, and began watching every televised wrestling program and reading every wrestling publication. By the age of 12, Jim began attending the weekly live events at the Louisville Gardens, with occasional trips to wrestling shows in Cincinatti and Indianapolis built around family vacations.
Too young to drive, Jim's mother Thelma took him to the matches, setting the stage for the "gimmick" that would become his entree into the sport. He began taking photos at the matches, and when he was just 14, began selling them to Christine Jarrett, the Louisville promoter, for sale at the souvenir stands. "Miss Christine" had taken a liking to the young man as Louisville's biggest fan and became friends with Jim's mother as a result.
Over the next several years, Jim's hobby both became a business, and provided him with a look at most aspects of the wrestling business itself. Christine's son, now legendary promoter Jerry Jarrett, had retired as an active wrestler to take over as promoter of the entire Memphis wrestling territory, which included Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, Memphis, Jackson and Nashville, Tennessee, Evansville, Indiana, and dozens of smaller cities and towns in between, in early 1977. Jim shot all the photos sold at the souvenir stands, wrote the articles and shot photos for the programs, and contributed photos to all the national wrestling magazines such as Wrestling News, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, the Wrestler and Inside Wrestling, as well as Gong magazine in Japan. He taped promotional radio interviews with the wrestlers, served as ring announcer and timekeeper at spot shows, and got the opportunity to watch how Mrs. Jarrett, the most successful female promoter of all time, ran her shows."By the time I was 20 years old", JC remembers, "I was going to over 150 live events a year. I had seen over 1,000 shows in person and at least 3000 wrestling TV shows either on broadcast TV or video tape. I had 6 years experience with photography, publicity, ring announcing, even publishing my own magazine. But I had never been a performer, actually ON the card, and I didn't really expect I ever would be."
That changed in 1982, a month before Jim's 21st birthday, when Jerry Jarrett asked him if he would like to be a wrestling manager. Jarrett's idea was for Jim to be a rich, spoiled "Mama's Boy" who used his family fortune to buy his way into wrestling, a takeoff on Gary Hart's original gimmick from the 60's. Since the fans had seen Jim's mother at the matches all those years, first driving him, then later helping her friend Christine operate the souvenir tables, it helped the gimmick, but in an unexpected way.
"The people in Memphis and towns she never went to hated me AND her", JC laughs, "but in Louisville, Evansville, wherever they knew her, I had MORE heat because the fans would hate me more for being such an asshole when my mother was so nice!"
Debuting on Memphis TV on August 21, 1982, Jim learned his craft with on the job training managing such stars as Crusher Broomfield (later One Man Gang), Jesse Barr, the Exotic Adrian Street and Miss Linda, and the masked Galaxians (Danny Davis and Ken Wayne), among others. In the Summer of 1983, Jim was sent down with a crew from Tennessee to Georgia, to run the local Georgia and East Tennessee towns as a branch of Georgia Championship Wrestling. Cornette managed the Angel (Frank Morrell), Bounty Hunter Jerry Novak, King Carl Fergie and former Royal Kangaroo Norman Frederick Charles 3rd. Returning to Memphis in August, he served as the assistant manager to Jimmy Hart's First Family, understudying Hart on the small town shows and once again, getting a lot of experience by working ringside for most of the top stars that came through the territory.All this would be valuable when his break came in November.Mid South Wrestling promoter Cowboy Bill Watts came to Memphis to see the talent as part of a trade agreement with Jarrett. Watts chose two Memphis veterans, Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton, to form a tag team that would soon be named the Midnight Express, and picked Jim to be their manager. Along with their rivals,
Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, the Rock & Roll Express, Watts also picked singles hero Terry Taylor and tapped Bill "Superstar" Dundee, a Memphis main eventer for years, as his booker. It proved to be one of the biggest talent acquisitions in history, as paced by the Express-Express feud and the innnovative Dundee booking ideas, Mid South Wrestling in 1984 shattered all it's box office records and had the biggest-grossing year in it's history. The Midnight Express series of matches with Watts and Junkyard Dog, dubbed "The Last Stampede", led Mid South to gross over a million dollars in a one month period, including crowds of over 23,000 fans in the New Orleans Superdome, 12,000 in Houston, and 20,000 in the same day in Oklahoma for shows in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The Midnights held the Mid South Tag Title most of the year, and battled the Rock & Roll in wrestling's first tag team scaffold matches, breaking more attendance records. In December, the Midnights headed to Dallas for World Class Wrestling and spent 6 months there in a heated rivalry with Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers, the Fantastics, including American Tag Title matches in Dallas' Reunion Arena before almost 20,000, and in Texas Stadium, home of the Cowboys, for the 2nd annual David Von Erich memorial event which drew a quarter of a million dollar gate. World Class Wrestling's large syndicated TV newtwork exposed the Express and Jim Cornette to a wider audience, and after gaining the interest of both Jim Crockett Promotions booker Dusty Rhodes and NWA World Champion Ric Flair, they were offered a spot in the Charlotte-based promotion, at the time the second biggest wrestling company in the country, behind only the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE).
In July 1985 they debuted on Crockett's flagship TV program, World Championship Wrestling on Superstation TBS, and were soon being
featured on 6 hours of cable and national syndication per week, and becoming top-of-the-card attractions in the NWA's wrestling war with the WWF for the next several years. Cornette was recognized as the top new manager in wrestling and won the 1985 Pro Wrestling Illustrated Manager of the Year award. The Express were in one of the feature matches at Starcade '85 in Atlanta, a Street Fight match with Jimmy Valiant and Ronnie Garvin. The event was the biggest-grossing NWA show to that point in history, drawing almost $800,000 before about 60,000 fans either live or on closed circuit.The Midnight Express won the NWA World Tag Title from the Rock & Roll in February, 1986, on TBS' first prime time wrestling telecast, from the Omni in Atlanta, and reigned as champions for over 6 months. On Thanksgiving Night, Starcade '86, the NWA's first-ever million dollar gate, was built around their famous scaffold match with the Road Warriors. Jim is best remembered for blowing his knee ligament taking the bump from the 24 foot scaffold, as with the live and closed circuit showing,
the home video being the first gold wrestling video with sales of over 50,000, endless replays of the fall on commercials on TBS for years, and the entire match being included in the WWE Road Warriors video release a few years ago, JC says "More people have seen me fall off that scaffold than anything else I've ever done."The Midnights were also in featured matches on the annual Great American Bash summer stadium and arena tours in the late 80's, and after Condrey left the team in 1987 and was replaced by Stan Lane, they were perennial United States Tag Team Champions from 1987 to 1989, also winning the PWI Tag Team of the Year award and the World Tag Title again in 1988. In early 1989, Turner Broadcasting, the new owners of WCW, hired a VP named Jim Herd who was no fan of the Express or Cornette, and while constant clashes with management stifled how they were used, they had two more years of classic matches with great opposing teams until Cornette and Lane walked out in November 1990. The complete story of the Midnight Express years has been documented by JC in his new book, The Midnight Express 25th anniversary Scrapbook, available on this website. Two aspects of his tenure in WCW served Jim well in his future endeavors, however. He had his first opportunity on the creative end when Flair installed him on the WCW booking committee in 1989. Jim very much enjoyed the matchmaking and writing television but was not as high on the backstage politics, an opinion he retains to this day. He had also done a lot of color commentary on TBS telecasts, often paired with Jim Ross, who taught JC a lot about wrestling broadcasting. The two Jims would reunite as a broadcast team in the WWF in the '90's.
In 1991, with WWF business on a downswing and WCW so badly mismanaged, Cornette felt a traditional, territorial wrestling promotion with good talent and an exciting TV show could still succeed, as many traditional wrestling fans were beginning to be driven away by the "sports
entertainment" phenomenon. He got record producer Rick Rubin to give him the financial backing to give it a try."Smoky Mountain Wrestling", JC says, "was basically a two man operation, me and Sandy Scott, at first, and later three with Brian Hildebrand (Mark Curtis). We kept about 16 wrestlers at any given time, were backed by an eccentric genius who missed "real" wrestling like we did, and got WAY farther than we should have, given how bad the wrestling business fell in the toilet in the 90's. WCW was owned by a billionaire with
national TV and PPV and big name stars, and a lot of our house shows were outdrawing theirs in the early 90's."With Scott, a wrestling legend and former Crockett promoter and executive, booking the arenas and tour schedule and promoting the towns, and Cornette booking the arena lineups, writing the TV's and serving as the top manager, Smoky Mountain Wrestling was launched in 1992. Based out of Knoxville, Tn., it was a 4 year rollercoaster ride.
"We always tried to have great talent, the guys who understood the style of wrestling, they
busted their asses, and the live events and TV shows were great for fans of Southern wrestling." JC remembers.Cornette managed Lane and Dr. Tom Prichard as the Heavenly Bodies (Jimmy Del Ray took over for Lane after his retitement). The Rock & Roll Express were reunited in SMW as the Bodies' chief rivals,
and legend Bullet Bob Armstrong was a mainstay as SMW Commissioner. SMW was definitely a critical success, it's video tapes popular among wrestling fans all over the world. The TV program was a ratings success in all it's key markets, winning time slots in Knoxville and Bristol, Tn. for the entire 4 years, scoring ratings between 3's and 8's on local FOX and NBC affiliates. At the gate, major summer events in the Knoxville Civic Coliseum in 1994 and 1995 drew nearly 5,000 fans paying over $40,000 to see shows featuring the SMW stars, WWF superstars and major names on the independent scene from Dan Severn to Dory and Terry Funk.SMW had achieved a first in 1993 when the Bodies vs. Rock & Roll match for the SMW Tag Title also appeared on Pay Per View events for both WCW and WWF--WCW's Superbrawl in February and WWF's Survivor Series in November. Bill Watts had taken over running WCW when Herd finally resigned, and Jim made a talent agreement with him for top SMW talent to augment the WCW PPV's while WCW talent would appear on SMW shows. When Watts left the company after Superbrawl, Cornette didn't trust anyone else in authority there and the deal was off. By Summertime, WWF had called Jim and asked if he and the Bodies would like to make dates for them, and the same type of talent trade was worked out there. As well, SMW became the first outside promotion ever recognized publicly on WWF television.Cornette also became the American spokesperson for WWF Champion Yokozuna, and Summerslam 93 from the Palace of Auburn Hills saw the Bodies lose a WWF Tag Title match to hometown heroes Rick & Scott Steiner, while JC cornered for Yokozuna as he retained
the WWF Heavyweight Title over Lex Luger in the main event. In JC's first WWF PPV event, he managed in both championship matches. Wrestlemania 10 was another landmark. "My SMW work was what I loved, and the WWF work was to finance it", Jim recalls." but even I have to admit that it was really cool that the first time I ever walked into Madison Square Garden, I managed the WWF Champion in the main event at Wrestlemania." Cornette capped off 1995 winning the PWI Manager of the Year award ten years after first winning in 1985.1995, however, was not a good year for SMW. It continued to be a critical success, and it's major events delivered at the gate, but it was the victim of a Catch 22. The cost of producing and airing the Tv show on broadcast affiliates was rising, so SMW couldn't afford to add markets. Without more TV markets, SMW couldn't run enough of those major events that brought in the big money. "We were running too many spot shows in Haysi, Va., and not enough arenas where we could draw 1500 or more fans." JC says. "But running 15 shows a month off only 4 or 5 strong
TV markets wasn't going to make it in the "wrestling recession" of the mid 90's. Even the WWF lost $6 million in 1995. I hated to, but I had to close it up in December."Cornette accepted a job on the WWF creative team and moved to Stamford, Ct. in 1996. He continued as a manager on-air for WWF throughout the year, managing WWF Tag Champions Owen Hart and the British Bulldog, and former WCW champion Vader. He celebrated his on-air "retirement" as a manager in December 1996 by being
Tombstone-piledriven by the Undertaker on TV, to concentrate on the creative team and more color commentary in 1997. JC had already served several stints as substitute color man on RAW on USA in 1994 and 1995, and was now often working with Ross on syndicated and international programming."The WWF creative job was at some points a lot of fun and at many points a living Hell", JC recalls, "you will, sometimes simultaneously, love Vince and hate Vince, and sooner or later you will develop a twitch. I was glad when I got on it and glad when I got out of it. "
In 1998, Cornette returned to the air to lead a group of "disgruntled NWA legends" to assault the WWF way of life, and there was more than a little venom to some of Jim's promos about the state of the wrestling industry. His shoot "Cornette's Commentary" segment caused a lot of talk among fans and the industry alike with his sharp, pointed barbs to WCW and even WWF business practices. Leading stars like Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and NWA World Champ Dan Severn into battle with the "sports entertainers" and making caustic comments got JC a lot of attention, but by 1999 he retired from managing again to concentrate on color and working as a scout and liason for young talent and independent promoters. Cornette ended his major-league managing career as a 12 time winner of the Wrestling Observer Best Manager poll, winning the voting every year from 1984 to 1996, except 1991 where he lost to Sensational Sherri Martel.
Jim continued to do a variety of color commentary work in 1999, including co-hosting the first episode of Smackdown on the UPN network in April, with Michael Cole on play-by-play. The Cornette-Ross team was split and seldom got the chance to work together.
"The Executive Producer of WWE television", Cornette says, "Is a person who doesn't like much. He doesn't like "rasslin", as they condescendingly call it up there in the WWE. So my commentary, actually treating it like a sport, was not his favorite. He doesn't like Southern accents, so JR and I as a team were doomed, even though everybody else liked our work for ten years but this guy. I was going nuts living in the Northeast and the only part of the business I really got to enjoy at that point was scouting the young talent and working with the independent promoters on who their upcoming talent was."
The WWE had put the other territories all out of business, and now had nowhere to get talent from that had the experience of working TV and a fulltime schedule. Jim saw the opportunity to do something more rewarding than "voiceovers on international Heat", and move back down South at the same time. He met with his old friend Danny Davis, the founder of Ohio Valley Wrestling. Davis had founded OVW as a school in 1993 in Jim's hometown of Louisville, and as he expanded, he had begun running TV and live events locally.Cornette made an agreement with Jim Ross in WWE Talent Relations, to establish a WWE developmental program at OVW, and moved back to Louisville in July 1999 to partner with Davis and serve as the booker and play by play announcer.
With Cornette handling the talent, creative and TV end, and Davis overseeing the business office, the school and the production, it would prove to be a successful combination.
"I was the chef", JC laughs. "and Danny owned the restaurant. The food was great and people liked it and we made money with it, but the reason we opened and closed on time and stayed in business was that the guy that owned the restaurant did everything else."
On TV, OVW soon expanded with a Saturday 11PM slot on the powerful Louisville WB affiliate, WBKI, and became often the highest rated program on the station's Saturday schedule, beating prime time programming.OVW was never bumped or preempted from it's time slot for over eight years. Home videos of the show were popular with fans around the world. The program was presented by JC as young superstars performing realistic angles using old school pro wrestling psychology, and was called by the Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer "often the best-booked hour of wrestling on TV each week from any group."
At the arenas, by June 2000 OVW entered a partnership with the local Clear Channel Radio group to bring major league wrestling shows to the Louisville Gardens. JC assembled a card mixing OVW stars with Louisville wrestling legends, and featuring WWE stars like Kane and D-Lo Brown, and the "Rockin' Rumble" drew almost 3,000 fans paying over $30,000 on June 23, 2000. The success of the first event led to a second, even bigger event in January 2001, OVW's Christmas Chaos.
That event, headlined by Kane vs.OVW star Leviathan (WWE's Batista) with manager Synn (wife Stacey) and Stone Cold Steve Austin appearing live for an interview with Jim Ross, plus Chris Benoit challenging Nick Dinsmore for the OVW Title, drew over 5,000 fans and almost $75,000, and was a high point for Jim. "My mom was here, and 27 years after she took me to my first Gardens show, she saw me book one that sold it out!" After a major show in July 2001 featuring the Undertaker that drew over $50,000, the city closed the Gardens, but OVW had been recognized as a local TV show
and wrestling school that had put together three major events in a one year period that drew more than 11,000 fans paying over $150,000 at the gate in the same building, numbers no other promotion in the country was doing short of WWE. As well, OVW ran over 125 live events a year in small gyms within a 150 mile radius of Louisville. In 2002, OVW began staging a series of live outdoor events at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, and over the past six summers they have become the park's biggest-drawing ongoing entertainment event.The OVW Training Center began producing talent under the WWE developmental program, as well as by recruiting their own students. Many aspiring young wrestlers began to travel to OVW from across the country to be seen or signed. Since 2000, over 100 talents that have made it to the WWE or TNA rosters either broke in or trained extensively in OVW, including current WWE Superstars John Cena, Batista and Randy Orton, TNA and NBC American Gladiators star Matt Morgan, and UFC Heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. Counting merchandise sales and TV sponsorships, OVW by 2005 was one of only three profitable fulltime wrestling promotions in the country.
"Unfortunately, changes in the WWE talent relations department put people in charge that not only didn't know how wrestlers should be trained", JC says, "but also wanted us to do whatever they said without regard to how it would affect OVW's business or ability to make money, or present a semblence of a quality product. I felt we had provided them with outstanding talent for 5 years and proven ourselves as a legitimate wrestling promotion and school with a quality product. They treated us like stooges in charge of a storage closet. Needless to say we were pretty far apart in our thinking, WWE and I. Let's just say after a year of tension and 6 weeks of blowups, we had the big one and agreed not to speak to each other anymore. And my blood pressure went down."
WWE released Jim from his consultant's agreement in July 2005, and JC stepped away from creative or on air roles in OVW while retaining his partial ownership. He and WWE have not spoken or done business since then, and, he says, "probably never shall." JC sold his piece of OVW back to Davis in May 2007, and by early 2008 the WWE had screwed OVW by pulling out of a contract they had signed only several months before, sending all their talent to the ill-conceived training venture in Florida they have poured a fortune into, which was supposed to have been patterned after OVW's success. OVW continues in business running 12 to 15 live events per month, and the TV show remains a local institution.
In Fall 2004, JC began taking part in Midnight Express reunion appearances, at wrestling events and fanfests all over the country. Charlotte, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Memphis and more have seen Midnight reunion matches against the Rock & Roll Express and others, bringing back great memories for 80's fans. "In 2009", JC says, "We'll still do a few, but I only have a few more bumps left!"Also in 2004, Cornette began doing a lot of work with Ring of Honor (ROH), the biggest and best independent promotion in the country. The promotion originally welcomed JC as a legendary manager, but his old "heel" side emerged when getting the opportunity to manage against his childhood hero Bobby Heenan on ROH events. Jim also hosted a series of video releases interviewing wrestling legends such as Heenan, J.J. Dillon, Bill Watts, Bruno Sammartino and more, and spent much of 2006 as ROH Commissioner.
In June 2006, JC joined TNA wrestling as their public face of management, and began laying the law down on TV to a new generation. His appearances on TNA Impact on Spike TV, seen weekly by almost 2 million viewers, are generally to promote a major match or announce a special stipulation, which is perfect for the Louisville Lip and his 30 years experience in selling matches. He also works in a behind the scenes capacity as a producer, enjoying working both with the younger stars and inside the production truck.
Jim also spent 2008 working on the Midnight Express Scrapbook, and after launching that, plans a series of collector's publications on classic wrestling, including an album of his photos of 70's and 80's superstars. He has begun to devote enough time to learn how to get on the internet since starting this site, and his next project is sorting and downsizing his mammoth wrestling memorabilia collection, offering everything from photos to posters, magazines to programs for sale on Cornette's Collectibles.Still residing in Louisville, Jim and wife Stacey enjoy going to different and unique restaurants on their travels, and will write about it in the column "Now With Tomato". At home, they enjoy gourmet cooking and watching film noir. Jim watches as much UFC programming as he can to feed the "old-time wrestling fan" still in him, and lastly, he is appraising his childhood collection of over 10,000 comic books for possible auction in 2009. "I want to turn them into landscaping", he laughs.