Ask 411 Wrestling: Has a Wrestler Ever Legitimately Beaten Up Jim Cornette?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals . . . through Hel Stryer and brimstone, it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Triple T Ticking Time Bomb Taz wonders what could have been:

Hulk Hogan had an impressive run from 1984 to 1988 as champion. Was there any talk at the time with putting the strap on someone else, even if Hogan got it back shortly thereafter? Seems like there may have been some money left on the table with a Hogan chase.

No, this was never seriously considered as far as I am aware.

You have to keep in mind that for the entire history of Capitol Sports/WWWF/WWF up to that point, the territory was not booked around babyfaces chasing championships. The territory was built around superhero babyfaces dominating by holding the title for years and years on end and defeating all comers. That’s how things worked with Bruno Sammartino, it’s how things worked with Pedro Morales, and it’s how things worked with Bob Backlund.

The phrase “the money is in the chase” was developed and employed in other territories. The structure of the northeastern territory and what it was able to convince its fans they wanted was a completely different kettle of fish.

Jayson wants to keep us on the theme of title reign lengths:

Was Bob Backlund’s WWF Championship reign in 1994 always supposed to have been as short as it was? Having Diesel beat him in seconds to win it at a house show feels like it was a last second decision.

Yes, it was always meant to be a short-term, transitional title reign. Nobody was going to book a then 45-year-old Bob Backlund to be a legitimate, long-term champion.

Also, I’m now in my mid-40s and having an existential crisis thinking back on just how flippin’ old Backlund seemed to me when was when I was a kid in the 90s.

Nick wants to talk about slugging the Louisville Slugger:

Has Jim Cornette ever got beaten up behind the scenes?  I can’t imagine his big mouth wouldn’t cause at least one person to lose it on him.  I remember several years back that Santino Marella got in his face at some event in Toronto.  Cornette tried to act and talk tough, then ended up literally yelling for security.

No, he hasn’t.

There are a few reasons for this.

First off, people think of Cornette as having divisive opinions today, but when he was a performer in the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of his views would have been shared by the vast majority of people he was working with. If somebody were to get pissed at him for running off at the mouth, chances are good that he would have more people supporting him in the locker room than not.

Second, even if somebody were upset with him, he almost always had backup. During the peak of his career, he was running with the Midnight Express and even Big Bubba Rogers for a time, and that group was tight enough that anybody who stepped to Cornette would have been dealing with all of them.

Third, while James E. may not be the most imposing physical specimen in the world, he’s not the kind of person who is going to back down from a confrontation, either. Even in situations where he very easily could have been beaten up, he’s gone face-to-face with people he had issues with. He even threatened Brock Lesnar after Brock was rude to his wife in OVW. The reality is that, even if you’re very likely to lose a fight, most people who are considering beating you up will think twice about it if they think you’re going to fight back.

Also, the question’s characterization of the confrontation with Santino Marella is totally incorrect. Though this is a minor point, it was in Detroit and not Toronto. Also, video of the encounter is freely available on the internet, and Cornette does alert security to the fact that Marella is bothering him, but after that when Santino won’t let it drop, Cornette continues to get right up in his face, even though he’s openly admitted in subsequent interviews that Marella could have destroyed them if they came to blows.

mjh from Disqus is wearing black bike shorts with yellow striping:

I am officially asking the question, how did Roadblock get into wrestling?

I actually did a full Roadblock career retrospective, including his breaking into wrestling back in July.

That retrospective was kicked off by a question from Tyler from Winnipeg, so congratulations, mjh. You asked a Tyler question.

Say his name, and he appears. I believe in Tyler from Winnipeg:

I don’t want this to be a daunting task, but is Al Snow in the top 300 1990s wrestlers?

Let’s try to answer this somewhat objectively by looking at the PWI 500.

According to that list, Al did not rank among the top five hundred wrestlers in the world in 1990, 1991, or 1992. However, he was number 379 in 1993, 112 in 1994, 56 in 1995, 90 in 1996, 140 in 1997, 70 in 1998, and 52 in 1999.

If you consider his ranking in 1990, 1992, and 1993 to be 501, which is the highest that it could possibly be, then his average PWI 500 rating in the 1990s is 407.8.

Therefore, he would not be in the top 300 wrestlers of the 1990s.

Jake is doing his best impression of a carnival barker:

What wrestling PPV/PLE do you think was promoted the best and the worst of all time?

As far as worst-promoted shows are concerned, there have been a ton of PPVs that some how got clearance to air with virtually no platform to promote them. Shows like the WWA, Heroes of Wrestling, iGeneration Wrestling, and even the early TNA weekly shows were just thrown on pay per view channels despite there being next to no mechanism to tell fans that they existed, outside of early internet coverage.

Shows like that almost have to be considered the worst promoted PPVs by default, because there wasn’t even an opportunity for promotion.

However, I’m going to assume that the question is really referring to PPVs put on by at least somewhat significant companies that have regular television to try to convince fans to buy their major shows.

If that’s the case, then I have to give the title of worst promoted PPV to 2006’s ECW December to Dismember.

Prior to the show, there were only two matches announced, one of them being a tag match between MNM and the Hardy Boys and the other being an Elimination Chamber match for the ECW Championship. While the tag bout at least looked good on paper, there was nothing about the Chamber match that could have excited anybody except for the most die-hard WWECW fans, of which there were approximately five.

On the best-promoted shows list, I’m gonna give the nod to Wrestlemania XVII. The Austin/Rock hype video set to Limp Bizkit’s “My Way” is still burned into my head 25 years later, and it remains the only worthwhile thing I think Bizkit has done during their career.

Bryan would have gotten away from it if it weren’t for those meddling corporate executives:

With TKO owning WWE and making a lot of creative decisions, is it possible they will run into the same disaster WCW had when corporate suits and Pizza Hut owners who don’t know wrestling come up with silly gimmicks like the Ding Dongs? The people in TKO aren’t “in” the wrestling business and if they tell HHH they want a guy coming to the ring on a Segway, he has to obey. What makes them any less prone to micro and mismanagement than Turner?

Technically, the answer to this question is “nothing.” 

In fact, we’ve already seen a version of that, as it was reported that the ill-received involvement of Pat McAfee in this year’s Wrestlemania came more from the TKO side than from within the more traditional WWE structure. Fortunately, the company did back off of that involvement, including scrapping a planned tag match that would have involved McAfee and Jelly Roll, when it became apparent that this was not what fans wanted.

Also, WWE already had a guy coming down to the ring on a Segway once, before they were under the TKO umbrella. How quickly we forget Simon Dean.

Marc is going to the chapel:

What do you think was the best and worst pro wrestling wedding/angle?

The best is obvious. It’s Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth at Summerslam 1991. Granted, there was not an “angle” in the sense that somebody ran in on the ceremony itself to kick off a feud, but the reality is that what fans perceived as a storybook romance between the two was far more over than any of the wackier weddings that would come during the Attitude Era or beyond. It is massive part of what cemented the couple as legends who have been and will continue to be remembered for decades after their retirements. Plus, it directly fed into the legendary rivalry between Savage and Jake “The Snake” Roberts, which created plenty of memorable moments in its own right.

Somewhat ironically, the worst wedding angle in history is actually a takeoff on the Savage/Elizabeth classic.

In late 2006, Jay Lethal was signed to TNA, and he made the mistake of showing somebody backstage that he could do a halfway decent impression the Macho Man. This resulted in his entire character being revamped, as he became “Black Machismo” and essentially had to do that Savage impersonation full time.

Even though it should have been a one-off, the gimmick lasted for years. It was still going at the Slammiversary pay per view in 2008, which was to feature the wedding between Lethal and his on-screen love interest SoCal Val. (Full name: Southern California Valifornia.) This was ostensibly an homage to Summerslam 1991, but it turned into a tremendous disgrace.

The ceremony started with a guy named Ace Young. Who is Ace Young, you ask? Don’t you know he’s a massive celebrity?! He’s the guy who came in seventh place on the fifth season of American Idol! So, you start off by bringing in a d-list reality TV “star” and portraying him as somebody who is just as if not more important than your wrestlers, which is a great way to make the entire promotion look second rate.

Then there were the groomsmen. Because Lethal was supposed to be a stand-in for Randy Savage, they decided the groomsmen should be other guys who were in the WWF in the 1980s, with Koko Ware, Kamala, George Steele, and Jake Roberts all showing up in tuxedos. Why was Kamala, largely portrayed as a wild man from the deepest, darkest jungles in the world just walking around in a tux like it’s the most natural thing in the world? Don’t worry about that. Why would Jay Lethal, who is supposed to be a takeoff on the Macho Man, want Jake Roberts anywhere near his wedding after what happened in 1991? Don’t worry about that, either.

Also, even though Lethal gets four groomsmen, they could only find one bridesmaid for SoCal Val. I don’t recall them mentioning who she was, but they did definitely look like they could be sisters.

Eventually, the ceremony begins. It seems like a standard wedding at first. When we get to the part where everybody should say, “I do” there is an interruption by Lethal’s best man. That was “The Guru” Sonjay Dutt, a gimmick that might be just as racist as Kamala’s.

Dutt declares that he should be the one marrying Val and not Lethal, which of course nobody else in the ring wants to go along with. This eventually leads to Dutt attacking Lethal with a part of the wedding set, and in the process he comes uncomfortably close to accidentally whacking Koko Ware’s macaw as well – not a euphemism, by the way.

The first man who tries to come to Lethal’s aid is Ace Young, who shows some impressive athleticism by springboarding over the top rope, but then he immediately demonstrates that being a good athlete does not necessarily equate to knowing what you’re doing in a wrestling ring, because Dutt takes him out with a worked punch and, in the process of trying to take a bump, Young falls forehead-first on to the middle rope and comes close to going down throat-first over the bottom rope.

And that’s when the legends hit the ring.

Koko Ware, at the time 51 years old and far from his peak ring shape, gets in between the ropes and goes toe-to-toe with Dutt. They have an even fight until Kamala hits the ring, at which point Dutt is beaten senseless by both guys. Sonjay goes down and then Koko grabs his legs, just holding him there for no apparent reason for what feels like a full minute. Eventually, Jake Roberts does get a python out from underneath the ring and places it on Dutt. I can only assume that Jake missed his cue, leading to Ware holding Dutt in prime snake-receiving position for an uncomfortably long period of time.

To cap things off, George Steele tries to do his old gimmick of eating a turnbuckle, but he has a difficult time tearing it apart, and whoever is directing the cameras for TNA does not know enough to cut away from him while he is struggling. Then, as Sonjay Dutt finally gets out of the ring and Jay Lethal finally gets back up to his feet, Koko Ware continues to smash up various wedding decorations for seemingly no reason.

To recap, this was the beginning of a feud between a heel Sonjay Dutt and a babyface Jay Lethal. Dutt is neutered immediately upon his heel turn, as a bunch of middle aged men get the better of him. Lethal also doesn’t come off too well, because he had to rely on the help of those middle aged men rather than avenging Val’s honor on his own. Plus, you’ve got poor Ace Young nearly giving himself a concussion.

For years, I have had to listen to people saying that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff ruined TNA. For years, I have tried to explain that TNA was a lost cause well before those two showed up. Segments like this one are a perfect example of why.

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.