Jim Cornette
The fans in Lake Charles, La., were crazy. The Freebirds would get their tires cut, so they started driving to the police station and having the police bring them to the show. The fans then cut the tires on the police car that brought The Freebirds.Collection: Car
I went on a diet and went from 248 pounds to 211.Collection: Diet
It's said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In that case, the WWE 'creative' team must be as crazy as a rainbow trout in a car wash.Collection: Car
MMA and the UFC have taken all of the pro wrestling fans because it's pro wrestling from 30 years ago, just in an Octagon and the fights happen to be real. But they're marketed exactly the same way.
Johnny Valentine's the one who said, 'I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real.' It would take him forever because he was just stinkingly boring for 30 minutes of the 40-minute match, but he would let people hit him as hard as they could, and he would hit people as hard as he could.
A lot of people say now, 'John Cena doesn't work.' Well, John Cena does the things that people go to see John Cena do, and he doesn't take a lot of risks.
Amateur wrestling was never considered a big box office draw because they're really competing but they're not getting a chance to call each other 16 kinds of names before the fight to get you interested.
Lio Rush, this little guy is a perfect heel manager, updated for modern times.
There's no casual wrestling fan anymore.
In 1986, wrestling was so huge in Charlotte that we did four events at the Coliseum with the Rock 'N' Roll and the Midnights in a 10-week period - and sold almost 45,000 tickets and drew almost $400,000 at the gate.
Nick Aldis is a great champion. He looks like a professional athlete. He dresses like one. He carries it well.
Even though wrestling is getting more popular - wrestling being more popular than it was five years ago is like being the nicest guy in prison, it's not a huge compliment, but it's still taking place.
I've had experience in management and TV and hope to be able to lend some of that to TNA and maybe persuade some wrestlers to come in this direction because of the influence I've had on their careers in the past.
Trevor Murdoch is mad, bad and dangerous. He's the only man I know that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia.
I would love to see TNA get a developmental program.
People that lie to me generally get banished or vanished to the planet Pluto in my mind.
I've always been a fan of Bobby Roode's.
We would get VHS tapes from wrestlers who wanted to come to Smoky Mountain. I got this tape from a guy called Lance Storm who I saw leaping from the top rope and cutting these great dropkicks. And the kid Chris Jericho he was with wasn't too bad either.
I know a lot of people may not really believe this, but I'm kind of outspoken and I like to tell people what I think.
I was a big fan of The Revival when they were in NXT. I thought they were as good as Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson.
I thought the Rousey match was the best major league debut in the history of wrestling. They did the right thing at the right time at the right pace and took people on a roller coaster ride. That, to me, was a pro wrestling match. I couldn't find fault with it, except I wish that Ronda had come out with her game face on when she did her entrance.
You can make kids and fans happy without calling them on the court in the last three minutes of the NBA Finals.
I'm the only person in wrestling that realizes I'm too old to do this anymore, and that's why I'm not a performer and I'm not going to be on 'ROH.'
Probably the biggest-kept secret about 'Ring of Honor' is that when you go to see a live show - I've had people in their 60s from down in North Carolina that have seen a lot of wrestling tell me that it was the greatest live wrestling show they've ever been to. The atmosphere is off the charts.
People naturally want to see two interesting people - one that they're predisposed possibly to like and one that they're predisposed to dislike - have a fight and see who wins.
I think people are realizing that whereas now the 'Ultimate Fighting Championship' has taken over what people used to like about pro wrestling in the '70s and '80s. We just want to see who's going to fight for the title.
The Rock 'n' Roll Express and the '80s NWA crew; Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen, Magnum TA, Dusty Rhodes - that was a great crew of talent and they were all so great to work with.
One of the greatest matches I ever saw was Jerry Lawler against Terry Funk in the Memphis Midsouth Coliseum, but there was Flair vs. Steamboat in Nashville back in '89.
You have to look like an athlete and you have to look like you could whip somebody. And let's face it, unfortunately Shawn Michaels couldn't whip anybody in a real fight as proven with every single fight he's ever gotten into with everybody in the business.
I feel like there's no reason to put myself through what I put myself through for 20-something years on airplanes, especially these days. You don't know whether your pilot is going to drop dead over the ocean; you don't know when you try to land whether the wheels are going to come down; you can be searched and seized and detained and quarantined.
Without talent, I don't care how funny the writers are or how many comedy lines they come up, without wrestlers you can't have a wrestling program.
The way that you teach wrestling is by finding good talent that you think can learn and putting them in the ring with a variety of other good talents who have experience and giving them the opportunity to pick things up.
Every wrestling show is now designed to be the greatest show ever. In contrast, the NWA show is different. It didn't tire people out to watch, something was allowed to register. It is the exact antithesis of planned, big budget, choreographed, scripted sports entertainment, and that is what makes the show so different.
Cowboy James Storm and Eli Drake, those guys can talk and rile the people up.
Maybe Rock and Elizabeth Warren could team up and shore up each other's weaknesses. Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything and all the experience, and The Rock could sell it to the people, 'cause the people could smell what Rock is cooking.
Life is too short to have anybody named McMahon in mine.
I had to spend eleven months in the same room with Vince Russo and Vince McMahon, that's where I really got to hate life in general.
You can make a really good one minute trailer out of a really stinky two hour movie.
I met Rick Rubin through Cat Collins, a DJ friend of mine that had worked for Rubin at American Recordings.
Tracy Smothers was the epitome of the perfect Smoky Mountain hero. He was legitimate.
'Bullet' Bob was one of the most important parts of Smoky Mountain from the start. He was a retired wrestling legend and talked better than anyone on the roster.
Modern day wrestlers are fans of the performance of wrestling instead of the concept of wrestling.
Since I left the wrestling business and got in the Jim Cornette business, my blood pressure is down considerably.
I can stay under 215 pounds, which is pretty good for me, if I stay off the road. If I go on the road, I invariably eat garbage and start to lose my girlish figure.
The biggest thing I want to do is not travel as much as possible. I enjoy not traveling very much.
From the time I was 5 years old, I collected comic books.
As far as the NWA tag-team wrestling of the '80s - and I know you're talking some heavy hitters there - the first thing people will always say is The Midnight and Rock 'N' Roll Express. We invented things as we went along that people had never seen. It was always different. And it was always good.
Old school fans are going to be shocked at just how much of the pro wrestling they grew up watching was, indeed, contrived, manipulated or, as it's called in the business, 'worked.'
When you think that in the '50s there was wrestling and boxing - that was it. There wasn't mixed martial arts at all; there wasn't even karate in the United States.
I came along the decade after the generation where a lot of heels were still getting stabbed, so I was always looking for it. I had a bullet-proof vest in a couple places.