Jim Ross On When He Found Out Radicals Wanted To Join WWE, Signing the Group

On a recent episode of Grilling JR, Jim Ross discussed the Radicalz jumping ship to the WWE in 2000. JR talked about keeping an eye on WCW programming when Russo left WWE, and when he found out they wanted to jump ship. Some highlights are below.

On if he kept an eye on WCW’s product when Russo jumped ship: “Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I paid attention. Our business is small so it’d be hard to ignore it. I don’t say I watched every minute of every show they did; I didn’t. Part of the time I was on the air doing RAW but yeah, I paid attention. Fans have to understand that we work in a very small universe. There are two companies right now that in a weekly basis with national television that are doing decent or good whatever however your term is business. So, yeah I paid attention. It’s just you just be paying attention for the competitive information of if you see something or somebody that is being underutilized that you have a chance to snatch up you jump on it. So, yeah I was paying attention.”

On when he found out the Radicalz wanted to jump to WWE: “Well the two guys they were the top of the list were Eddie and Benoit. I figured that because of the relationship the four of them, the Radicalz had with each other, that my success might lie in making a package deal and bringing all four of them in and giving them jobs and paydays. And that’s how it worked out. So I don’t remember exactly who called me, one of the four, it wasn’t Saturn. It might have been Eddie. I’m not real sure. When I got a little pushback because [of] the guy’s size you know, you notice that all four of the Radicalz were under six feet tall, and hired four guys with main event money — they’re under six feet tall. Was very unusual for WWE at that time. Jericho was a big proponent for those cats. Look, all of us were. You’re a wrestling [person] and you could have you had vision or you could — look, at their matches anybody would be. So this under six feet deal was a non-issue to me, and that’s how I sold it. And I had to defend that decision to hire those four guys to some on the creative staff because they perceived, they were kind of brainwashed I guess that you have to be 6’3’’ and you got to weigh 250 or whatever. I’m just throwing numbers out there, but you get the general drift. It was just unnecessary.

“So, I had my instincts on that one because I knew that getting you know, Malenko is an amazing talent. He’s doing a great job in AEW as an agent, producer, whatever you want to call him. But the two stars that had the biggest upside which we saw culminate at WrestleMania 20 were Eddie and Benoit. Two of the best in the world, so it I can hire four quality talents tow of them being two of the very best in pro wrestling anywhere then why wouldn’t I be aggressive in doing that and stand my ground and not be talked down that these guys are too small. You know Vince is good about that his theory would be to have bigger guys, but he trusted my judgment. I had a pretty good track record of hiring talent and so he went along with it and we needed new stars. We needed guys that could work and we got all those things with these four hires.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Grilling JR with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.