Jim Cornette Discusses His Interactions With Vince McMahon During WrestleMania Weekend and Putting Aside His Heat With WWE to Induct the Rock N’ Roll Express

– Jim Cornette recently appeared on Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Cornette on getting the call to induct the Rock ‘n Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame: “They called me from that infamous ‘203’ area code, which usually when you see that you are either fired or hired, and it was a gentleman from Talent Relations asking if I could do it. I couldn’t be the prick in that instance and say that I didn’t want to to do and that I was mad at them. Besides, many people that I was mad at are out of the way.”

Cornette on his experience during WrestleMania weekend and his interaction with Vince McMahon: “It was great. Everybody treated me fantastic, and I didn’t have a problem with any of the boys, or production people. I even saw Vince McMahon. He said to me, ‘Welcome home, Corny. I know you haven’t always felt like it’s your home.’ I said, ‘Well Vince, I never had words with you, but several people who worked immediately underneath you.’ It’s like the difference between a guest in your home who you treat well and bring out the best liquor and the good food and everything and your drunk brother in law that is sleeping in the spare room. When you are there all the time and you are under foot they don’t treat you as nice, but when you come in every 10-15 years and pop in and out. It’s like, how can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

Cornette on his ill feelings with the company having passed: “Well, I don’t want to say mad, but there was ‘heated’ exchanges back in the closing days of OVW when I said that I was running our own business there in OVW and they said, no, we are running their storage closet. They didn’t actually say that, but that was how they treated it. I thought we should be able to do whatever we wanted since we were paying the bills and signing the leases and they thought we should do whatever they wanted to do with our business. I was looking at it like as running a territory that was contracted to train and give development to the WWE talent. As they got their hooks further and further into us–there was times when they would pay us not to do business with people they were mad at.”