I'll always give Cornette this: he might have different opinions of wrestling, but he's as honest as they come. You can't say that about the vast, vast majority.

He is definitely honest, I agree, that has to be respected in a business with so little of it.

I have said before, he has his failing and seems extremely volatile to work with, but I would much much prefer to be watching a Cornette booked promotion than the current stuff.

He wouldnt forget what a heel, a face or a decent feud is supposed to be. There would be a few ridiculous things, sure, but there would definitely be enough to buy into

For all the "he's stuck in the past" people throw at Cornette, most of the shit he talks about comes down to basica logical storytelling. That shit is timeless. At it's core, it doesn't change. Cornette understands the basics.

Amusingly, wasn't he more or less "ahead of his time" on some of his ideas for ROH?

Yeah. His biggest problem has always been his brash personality which is why he usually didn't stick around for long wherever he went or in certain roles.

He had some great ideas for ROH and certain wrestlers but meant nothing at the time because he was too much of a headache to work with due to his constant complaining and arguing. Even WWE had their limits when it came to dealing with his personality.

Cornette can be a pain, but some of the gripes he had in ROH sounded pretty reasonable (Corino getting injured with no medical staff or management present)

Thank you. This 100%. Cornette's like one of the few people that hasn't forgotten what wrestling is at its core. It's hard to find something he is actually "wrong" about.

There's so much internet straw-man "he wants everything to be a chinlock" bullshit that flies around about the guy, and it's like "Do you actually listen to him? His wet dream match is Seth Rollins vs. Davey Richards."

The thing that most frustrates him about modern wrestling -- besides it being a joke -- seems to be something that irks me too. Shows have terrible structure, everybody does the same shit, and everybody tries to cram all their shit into each and every match.

Ironically, everybody seems to get along better in the business and everyone is awesome, etc., but guys are actually more selfish in how they desperately try to get themselves over with every appearance instead of just going out there and being part of the under-card in a healthy way. If everybody is "over" then who really stands out? Cornette actually sees the business holistically and from a perspective that is bigger than "my match." He sees a card, a promotion and an industry and how everybody going out there and doing Seth Rollins vs. Davey Richards means that by the time you get to Seth Rollins vs. Davey Richards, they feel like a knockoff of their own act.

I spent my hard-earned money on an EVOLVE show and the first three matches were all "let's kick out of finishers" and it got exhausting. I turned it off and I never went back. That's the equivalent to walking out on a show.

The modern criticisms of Cornette seem to come from that involvement in ROH, where he wanted things to slow down creating friction between him, the boys and therefore the audience, who the boys treated as the boys. ROH had that same sense of ownership that the fans in ECW had with Heyman. It's great for building up a rabid bunch of loyalist fans, but they get very territorial with their shit, even if it's trash. I'm not saying ROH was, but there was some stuff that probably should have changed that they can't see, because at the end of the day they are still marks.

Yes. Meltzer has credited him for saving the company by helping with the sale to Sinclair too. But his plans for ROH were basically what Triple H and WWE have done with NXT but with Baltimore as a base as opposed to Orlando.

He tells a hilarious story about how fans on the internet were shitting on the creative direction, so he took himself off TV or whatever by having someone beat him up, and they announced that he was gone or whatever, but they did the same stuff they always did and the fans were like "This is great without Cornette!"

And a lot of the stuff Cornette gets criticized about preventing in ROH is no longer en vogue. Hardcore wrestling and the "too much" style is starting to lose its appeal, because of medical knowledge, social change, and it generally being a hot-shotting tactic. A lot of the myths about ECW are getting busted and that "cool aesthetic" that people were chasing for a long time has been replaced with more sensible stuff. Well, that might be confirmation bias on my part, because I only frequent places on the internet I want to, haha. But I heard someone say that SMW holds up better than ECW does, and there's probably a lot of truth to that, because ECW was very much of a product of its time trying to tap into a zeitgeist instead of being, at its core, good pro-wrestling.

He was the mind ROH needed but didn't deserve. In my opinion. I'm not super-familiar with the time period, and I remember ROH feeling "colder" than it did when Joe was killing people all over the place -- but not as cold as it does now. I heard they were doing a concept called Defy or Deny recently, which was an elimination match where the champion faces three guys and the winner either gets a title shot if they're a challenger, or the last guy the champion beats is denied a title shot while they are still champion. I absolutely hate this idea. I looked it up to see when it started, and it does come from the time Cornette was still with the company, but I can't find any confirmation on whether or not he was behind it. It sounds like a name he would come up with. But if that's him, I'd criticize him for having a guy outlast two guys and then get denied a title shot as much as I would TNA for firing the winners of matches. It's not as ridiculous, but it's still in that realm.

But yeah, Cornette was right about ROH needing Sinclair and needing to clean up. Also, philosophically, he was probably able to see the inner-workings of things a lot clearer than the marks who don't think they are marks but actually really are and resent being worked because it "insults their intelligence."

It sounded like a lot of stress. From his side, it sounds like he was between this rock and a hard place of business decisions that were baffling to him as a wrestling promoter, and the boys who didn't have developed minds for what is really going on. You've got higher-ups who are running a shit show, and talent that are crying because it's not enough of a shit show.

When he flies into a real rant about how much he hates someone, you can sometimes feel passion crossover into venom, but for some reason being yelled at has never bothered me. In the little bit of entertainment work I have done, I've worked with some people who yell at people and chew them out all the time. My attitude has always been "Sure, Jim. What would you have me do?". For example. It always works. Always. At the end of the night they've always either apologized for losing it in the pressure cooker or given me kudos for holding in there the way they asked me to and there is a time and a place to hash that shit out.

From what I've heard of the talent that have done shoots on Cornette's time in ROH -- they just remind me of the kids in school who would fall apart if they were yelled at, or roll their eyes as they are being yelled at or yell back like they're going to come out with what they want. And I guess some people just don't deal with that teaching style, and but it does go to that teacher/student dynamic. Effective teachers are able to adapt to a student's needs, but a good student learns how to extract knowledge from a teacher.

I haven't heard Kevin Owens' whole shoot on Cornette or whatever, but he sounds dumb to that process. I'm sure I've heard him say something like Cornette would yell and scream at him and then say "Now I'm going to go out there and put you over," and he acted like that was baffling. It's doing your job, lol. And a lot of his comments sound like that shade "he was so angry" and "I'm a cool guy and I wanted to change the industry and the fans were with me but Cornette wouldn't let me do whatever I wanted. And that's out of date. You got to let me do whatever I want." And it would be frustrating if your champion was pushing for his best friend to headline a PPV against him, but that best friend was still refusing to sign their contract.

Cornette tries to run things like a promoter or a booker that was actually in charge. ROH wanted to operate like it was by the boys for the boys.

OVW was still so superior to NXT when it came to creating talent too. Triple H took over developmental in 2011. Cornette wasn't in developmental for 7 years. A lot of that is Jim Ross' eye for talent. But they found and polished up a lot of guys, and the best NXT has done is Charlotte Flair.

Cornette is like Heyman: if he's going to be involved creatively in a company it has to be his company.

Yeah, I think that's true.

Every other time it wasnt , they crashed and burned: Cornette in WCW, WWF, ROH, TNA. Heyman in WWF, and OVW.

Yeah, they can't play nice with others.

They can't play with someone over them impacting their vision. I think Cornette could exist with JR and similar people. Heyman worked well with Dave Lagana and could probably have stooges that worship his brilliance to type up scripts for him. But it's those relationships that challenge philosophies that they just can't exist around.

I wish there were more shoot interviews with Heyman. I love hearing him talk about the creative processes in WWE. His story about the conference call on Austin's podcast is fantastic.

I want to hear more from him about ECW in 2006. I remember being heart-broken as a fan, and for the guy. He was out there and just falling apart at December to Dismember.

If it isn't their company then it isn't their vision at the end of the day.

also, if you think Paul Heyman would do anything but lie as much as Bruce Prichard in a shoot, you are desperately naive.

The impetus is to find a way to meld your vision into the company's vision to the benefit of your career and the company's end game. But you can't go into a company and "play by your rules". You have to respect their culture and way of doing things, no matter how backwards you may think it is. Once you've carved your niche in the company, and the boss trusts you, you'll get more freedom. But if you're combative from day one (or even day 100), you're fucking yourself over.

And they've never shown that they can do that for more than 2 years. 2 years seems like their shelf life in a company I'm terms of creative.

Was either guy combative from day one? Cornette seems to have lasted quite a little while and got himself quite trusted by Vince.

or even day 100 may have worked well as even day 1000. You still have to respect your environment and work within the system.... especially when it's a Monopoly.

Well, only if you want to be there. Some people have no problem deciding that they don't want to play that game and would rather leave than compromise. I'd put both Cornette and Heyman into that group.