The Jim Cornette Experience Episode 209
Release Date: November 30, 2017
Recap By: Mark Charles Adams
DIRECT LINK TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD
Top Stories/Moments of interest
• Pleasant behind the scenes talk of a non-WWE, yet large scale, wrestling event
• Interesting stories of the early 1900’s shoot wrestling scene
Recap
0:00 – Intro: Jim welcomes us to this “What I did on my Thanksgiving episode” of the podcast and promises us a Wrestlecade wrap-up and another edition of story time with the Tennessee Stud. Getting mixed up, Cornette then introduces co-host Fryin’ Brian Last, after attempting to reference the Flying Brian Pillman book he has just received from Liam O’Rourke. They start discussing Thanksgiving, Brian says it’s not as fun as it used to be. Jim adds that the Native Americans probably like it less than the Pilgrims. Cornette adds how his generation was lied to in school about how the “Indians” taught the Pilgrims to farm and eat when in fact the reality was much darker. They then discuss how “Indian” is no longer an acceptable term and Brian mentions a Don Rickles stand up show he recently saw and how you couldn’t have that special now. Jim adds it’s not the words but the intent behind them and they briefly get political for a moment, mentioning Roy Moore and Al Franken again like last week. Brian adds how Matt Lauer is the current focus of sexual harassment investigations.
5:35 – Political Promo: Jim explodes into his political rant of the week about “the Cheeto in chief, President p**spot,” talking about the Trump executive orders and deregulation and how the one thing he can brag about in his first year is the stock market is up. Jim admits to having made a little money off it, but how the deregulation is off the back of the workers, good air, clean water and the general financial system. They discuss the current tax reform proposals and Brian says trickle down doesn’t work. They then touch on the estate tax reform and how ironic they find it that Trump and his family will be a big beneficiary of it. Jim says there are bigger problems happening politically and Trump isn’t a good enough juggler to keep all these balls in the air.
12:09 – Ads and stories: Jim segues from apocalyptic political talk and claims people can “entertain yourself while it lasts” with his fine products from the website. They discuss an offer of signed remaining copies of the Midnight Express book, that will be sold Monday 6th December at 6pm, less than 20 copies for $100 each.
Jim then reads a funny story about a dad that recently received his Wrestling Gold DVD set and, while his wife was away, watched a Randy Savage/Lanny Poffo versus Rock n’ Roll Express match with his autistic son. The son and believed that the piledriver through a table had killed Ricky Morton. Later announcing to his mother “Dad let me watch a murder!”.
They finish up discussing that the Drive-Thru pod will be back Monday 6th December and discuss other shows on the network.
23:08 – WrestleCade wrap-up: Jim says the wrestling was great, but everything else sucked. He’s quick to mention WWE holding Starrcade nearby didn’t hurt business; Wrestlecade was still a sell-out and adds they really need to move to a bigger room or extend the hours.
Jim relates the tale of how bad his hotel was: Trouble with wifi, no air conditioning, and bad food. Cornette literally reads Brian the whole room service menu before saying how different the burger was the two nights he had it, from cremated one night to raw the next. Jim then talks about the fanfest and wishes he’d taken notes describing it as sensory overload, trying to remember everyone he met and caught up with at the show. Adding Mick Foley was apparently there, though he never set eyes on him. Jim talks about surprising fans by knowing who they were from Twitter and meeting many young wrestling talents who came up to see or meet him. He then talks again about what he does and doesn’t like in younger talent and how the Internet often paints him in a bad light on the matter.
44:20 – Supershow talk and retirement from managing: Talking about the Saturday night Supershow, Jim discusses being in Dan Severn’s corner for his match. Given that it was his retirement from managing, some people seemed disappointed he didn’t do more in the match. He said he had no intention of making a big thing out of it, not wanting to be thrown around or knock people out with the tennis racket. Jim discusses how, with his 35th anniversary in September, it was as good a time as any to hang it up. He adds there was no story to it, he was not established as a heel or face for this match and has only managed three times this year. So, with nothing big planned and the show already having enough, Cornette didn’t want to detract from the match.
Brian jokingly asks what happens when the WWE call him to come in and manage the Revival and they discuss which member is out injured and when they’ll be back together. Jim adds they’re a pair he likes as they take it all seriously and they’re highly talented.
52:00 – Smokey Mountain Reunion Q&A: Jim moves to talking about Sunday and the SMW show, noting how serious Matt Striker took his host duties and saying it was sad that Bullet Bob Armstrong and Tim Woody couldn’t make it. A wealth of folks were there and the audience enjoyed themselves and much of the panel was in the same place for the first time in many years. Jim jokes that the show happened after a church service in the same building and he claimed he was there to offer the opposing viewpoint, saying they didn’t see the humor in that.
Jim says Dr. Tom Pritchard gave a good speech of how no one made money off SMW but there was a lot of opportunity and fun had in that era. Jim says it was nice to see so many of the old fans again and says it was like someone praising your children and he feels energized to get back to writing the SMW book.
Cornette finishes up this segment talking about how bad the traffic was heading back on Sunday afternoon and the frankly ridiculous amount of food he ate when he made it to his destination.
1:03:22 – Storytime with the Tennessee Stud: Ron Fuller is asked about his grandfather, Southern Wrestling pioneer Roy Welch. Ron tells a selection of small stories about Roy going up in New Mexico in the early 1900’s. The first is about a cattle drive around 1910 when Roy was 9, moving a small group of cattle off the plateau for the winter. Reportedly barefoot, they drove the cattle several hundred miles before Roy was left to follow the cows for the next 3 months. The second story is about Roy first going off to become a wrestler in Amarillo, Texas. First Roy found and befriended Cal Farley, before being sent to work with the original Dutch Mantel.
Ron then tells stories of Dutch challenging people in local bars to 100-yard races which he would intentionally lose, before challenging them to an arm wrestling contest, which he would lose again. Only then would the original Dutch challenge the very doubtful crowd to a wrestling match, usually for a much larger bet by this point. Obviously Dutch would take the guy down and have him screaming in moments, before then taking the whole crowd for their money. Dutch would do this town after town. Jim mentions previous episodes discussing the definition of “Marks” and how well this fits.
The first time Roy trained with Dutch he got broken ribs, the next time a broken wrist. It was only on the third time that Dutch agreed to train him to be a wrestler. Ron says this is similar to Hulk Hogan receiving a broken leg, it was just the way people tested anyone who wanted to train seriously. Ron goes on to discuss an event in Houston around 1918, possibly the formation of an early territory, where two promoters decided to put their best shooters up against each other to win the right to run shows in the town. Roy went along to watch Dutch’s back, the match apparently ended with Dutch literally knocking his opponents eye out with a punch that broke his orbital bone.
During his training, Roy was sent on the road with a traveling carnival wrestling show, challenging members of the crowd and apparently never lost. Jim added how prevalent this all was and that’s why pro wrestling is linked to carnivals even today. After returning, Roy worked in the Texas oil fields and trained with Dutch, apparently pinning Dutch in a shoot match for the first and last time. After that, Dutch wouldn’t fight him again, claiming he was ready and arranged for him to go to work in Columbus, Ohio. Before leaving, Roy had a fight with a local oil rig bully, trapping him in various locks and embarrassing him in front of the co-workers he had terrorized. Roy says this was the kind of man he was – he had a chance to really harm him physically, but sought to hurt him in another way.
1:43:40 – Show wrap up and goodbyes
Rating 6/10
Review
This week felt bizarrely light on actual wrestling talk. It was a fun enough episode, but everything felt a bit lost in the whirlwind. I think they spent more time on travel and hotel menus than wrestling in the first half. The Storytime section was mostly interesting anecdotal stuff from an era before wrestling really became formalized. It’s not an essential piece of listening by any means, but if you like hearing Cornette prattle on about traffic as much as politics and wrestling, you’ll find a balanced show here to kill a couple hours.
Timestamps
5:35: Political promo
23:08: Wrestlecade wrap-up
44:20: Supershow talk and retirement from managing
52:00: Smokey Mountain Reunion Q&A
1:03:22: Storytime with the Tennessee Stud
1:43:40: Show wrap-up and goodbyes
Writer Bio
Mark is an English storyteller, joker, and drunk.
This week he went to Harry Potter world and bought his first wand.
It’s okay to be jealous.
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