Jim Cornette recently spoke with Sports Illustrated about various topics. During the interview, Cornette gave high praise to some of the talents in NXT currently and said that he was not surprised by the amount of top-tier talent NXT is producing for WWE.
“The NXT roster, in-ring performance wise, is now ahead of the main roster,” said Cornette. “I’m not surprised, especially because they’re signing a lot of guys who were already top guys to begin with. I’m not trying to piss on their cornflakes, but they have signed [Shinsuke] Nakamura, [Austin] Aries, Finn Bálor, Samoa Joe, and Bobby Roode–they’ve signed literally everybody that’s a top star on the independents or other promotions. There is some great talent–like The Revival and Tommaso Ciampa, who is an old Ring of Honor guy–in NXT.”
As seen in the finish of the Brock Lesnar – Randy Orton match at Sunday’s SummerSlam pay-per-view event, Lesnar busted open Orton the hard way with his elbows. In the past, wrestlers would use razor blades to cut their forehead to get blood in their match. Cornette thought that WWE’s no blood policy and their ethics with how they handle the finish of the match was mind-boggling.
“I don’t know what the f— they’re thinking, and I commented on that for my podcast that drops on Thursday,” said Cornette. “The rule in the WWE is that there is no blood. Well, they just violated that rule, they had blood. They can say that it wasn’t self-inflicted blood, but no, this blood was inflicted by this big moose beating the f— out of Orton. If they’d have just said f— it, taken the blade, and done it the easy way, you couldn’t have proved different. This was worse than using a razor blade–a former UFC champion just elbowed a guy in the top of his f—— head and busted his head wide open. What problem do they think they’re getting out of by doing it that way? I don’t understand. Blood adds drama to wrestling, but the reason the blade was invented a hundred years ago is because it’s easier than going through sh– like that,” said Cornette. “The hard way was used in the old days when there was doubt about wrestling’s credibility, and guys would do the hard way in a high profile match in an arena in front of a lot of people or on TV to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that wrestling was real. That horse has left the barn. Bret Hart, several times, got busted open during a blade ban but was creative about it and said, ‘No, I didn’t do it,’ and no one – not even Vince McMahon – could tell the difference. So it seems it would have been a lot easier to blade instead of opening up a crater the size of the Red River Gorge on Randy Orton’s head. If Randy had done a good blade job, no one would have known if Brock really opened him up.”
Cornette, who was the former booker of Ohio Valley Wrestling, explained that he thought John Cena would be the next Ric Flair due to his look and in-ring work.
“John Cena’s success was the least surprising,” said Cornette. “When Cena got to OVW as ‘The Prototype,’ he looked great physically, he could cut a wonderful promo, and he impressed [OVW founder] Danny Davis when he showed up for the first day of class after coming out from California by already getting a place to live in Louisville. He got there early, always had his sh– together, and was always a step ahead. I thought he was going to be the next Ric Flair. Cena’s in-ring work at the time–for the time that he had been in the business–was incredible. 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. I would imagine if he dove off the top rope onto a pile of seven or eight guys, then Vince McMahon would probably take a rusty fishing knife after him and say, ‘You’re worth $50 million dollars a year to me. Don’t f— up and get hurt.’ So I don’t expect four-star matches out of John Cena because all the guys that have four stars matches these days have injuries on a regular basis, and Cena is too valuable, so I give him a pass on some of those things. I don’t think John ought to be taking risks.”
Cornette also talked about his podcast and more. You can read the entire interview here.
