Jim Cornette Says Vince McMahon Didn’t Know What He Was Doing By Having David Schultz Talk to John Stossel, Talks Reaction Backstage

Jim Conette talked about the “Dr. D” David Schultz/John Stossel incident on his latest podcast, saying that Vince McMahon had no idea of what he was doing by having Schultz talk with Stossel. The Schultz/Stossel incident was the focus of this week’s episode of Dark Side of the Ring, which detailed how Schultz slapped Stossel when he was interviewed for an expose on the business and Stossel said he thought wrestling was fake.

Schultz was told to talk to Stossel by Vince McMahon, and Cornette said that McMahon had no idea what mess he was creating by putting Schultz — who was very much about protecting the industry — face to face with Stossel. Schultz said he was told to stay in character and has said that McMahon told him to “blast” Stossel, which Cornette said was explained by Vince as meaning an intimidating promo and not a physical incident. You can see the highlights and full clip below:

On McMahon telling Schultz to ‘blast’ Stossel: “Fuji was right there, laughing his ass off and waiting for Schultz to slap him again. But Vince was there because … what Vince McMahon had said was, ‘David, that guy, that reporter’s here. Blast him! Give it to him!’ Well, the interpretation, Vince claims that he meant blast in a verbal way because Schultz was a f**king hell of a promo and intimidating f**ker. And Vince claimed afterward, he meant blast him verbally, and really give it to him verbally. But Schultz told him, ‘Hey, my boss just said, ‘Go knock this motherf**ker out if he gets out of line.” And the video was part of the lawsuit, and David has a lot of those documents and et cetera.”

On Vince McMahon not knowing what he was getting into: “To me, it was so hilarious because Vince McMahon didn’t even realize what a perfect storm he had created. He took — he said something, asked one of his wrestlers who was a big, intimidating looking, tough, badass guy to go at least intimidate a reporter. But even Vince didn’t realize the sweet irony of the whole thing. A smart-ass Yankee reporter from New York was going to tell this badass from west Tennessee that wrestling was fake when this badass from west Tennessee was personally trained by Herb Welch, a shooter from the ’30s. [laughs] Schultz at that point was literally one of the last links to the pioneer days of the ’30s and the old carnival shooters, and the Welch family, and the training guys to f**king work by stretching them in a barn before you smarten them up.

“So of anybody that would have taken the business seriously on that roster at that time, David Schultz was the one guy that was far on the extreme. And then you paired him off with his complete mirror image, this little weaselly reporter from New York who gets in his face and tells him he’s a fake. Vince didn’t even have that, didn’t even grip that irony. He was just using Schultz because he was a big badass-looking guy. He didn’t realize that Herb Welch had beat this motherf**ker until he could not walk, until he had to crawl into his house, every night when he’d come home to his wife while he was training him, before he ever even smartened him up. And the whole f**king — the overriding policy. The one directive that David Schultz was given since the first day he was smartened up, after he’d had the s**t kicked out of him and been stretched from a**hole to appetite was, ‘Never expose the business. Never give the secrets away.’ It was perfect.”

On the initial reaction backstage after the slap: “Schultz was a hero to me when it happened, he was a hero to a lot of the guys. Everybody popped, because that was the pre-internet days. You didn’t know what had actually happened and what it looked like until you saw it on TV. And he slapped the bejesus out of Stossel. Stossel needed Omax after that.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.