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Jimmy Korderas Remembers Scary Moment Of Planes Flying Over WWE Tribute to the Troops In 2003

December 1, 2021 | Posted by Joseph Lee
WWE Holiday WWE Tribute to the Troops Image Credit: WWE

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Jimmy Korderas spoke about a scary moment during the first Tribute to the Troops in 2003, in which planes flew over the show. Korderas was working as a referee for WWE at the time, with the incident happening during a match between Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit. Unlike the recent editions of the show, this special actually aired from Iraq in the middle of the ‘War on Terror’ at the time. Here are highlights:

On planes flying over the ring: “During the show, I got to referee the match between Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, which was amazing. What we didn’t expect was as we are going to the commercial break spot, all of a sudden here come these planes flying overhead. That we didn’t know was going to happen. So, I started to go, ‘oh my goodness, what’s going on here?’ Then I looked at Chris and Eddie and they were like, ‘what’s going on here?’ And we all kind of thought, ‘are we under attack here, are we in trouble?’ Somebody from ringside had to get up and told me, ‘Listen, we are all good, we’re okay this was planned.’ Nice if you would have told us about it. Because all three of us in the ring are like, ‘are we under attack here? Should we duck under the ring?’ So we didn’t know about it. I guess they wanted the natural reaction. They got one anyway and they almost got more than they bargained for.”

On being proud of taking part in the special: “One of the proudest things that I have ever done with WWE, is take part in the Tribute To The Troops special. Especially the one we did when we flew to Iraq to Camp Victory, to perform live in front of the troops there. It was amazing because we got to meet some wonderful men and women over there.”

On the hotel arrangements: “We got to stay in one of Saddam’s Palaces. Yeah, this is where they put us up. Let me put it this way, the furniture was all pretty much gone except for one giant royal-looking chair, which everyone took a picture in. But, in the rooms, because of all the furniture being gone, we all slept in cots. Which is not a big deal because if the servicemen and women can do it, we can do it too. But each room, the boys were in one room and we were in the room with the crew and everybody. Each room had a king-sized bed,” he said. “We were looking and the leader of our crew who was all of 5’5, he commandeered the king-sized bed. We were like, ‘come on man, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ In the other room, they had one king-sized bed, which ‘Taker had, he’s our leader, everybody said, ‘it’s your bed, you take it.’ “The only problem was Big Show was also on the trip,” he said. “So, Big Show comes walking into our room and he says, ‘hey, how’s it going guys,’ then he looks over at the king-sized bed and goes, ‘you guys got a king-sized bed. Oh hell no.’ So Big Show spent the night in our room.”