Quackenbush responds to Cornette's reaction to his speech about wrestling

Because the wrestling world has turned into something that he doesn't care for, and something that he feels is incorrect in terms of creating and maintaining a healthy industry.

He's the guy who thinks people wrestle too quickly or do too many big spots, because if Big E. Langston throws himself through the ropes one more time he's going to break his neck.

He's the guy who went to war with two of the smaller wrestlers in JCP (Rock N'Roll Express), but decries what he calls the "video-game" style of wrestling that was popularized in the X-Division because there's no psychology and there's no story.

He's the guy who broke in at a time when women's wrestling was nonexistent or limited to a non-match between two valets, and sees what the NXT girls coming up can do and thinks they're outshining the guys.

He's the guy who looks at Lucha Underground and doesn't see a show that elevates wrestling into a mythology and takes cues from an alternative tradition (lucha libre), but rather sees it as a complete contrast to what wrestling was and should be to make the most money, provide the most opportunities and receive the most attention.

Jim's always been fond of saying the UFC is doing what wrestling should have done, and if you look at TNA or WWE and look at all the gimmicks and gimmick matches that might pop up on free television or pay-per-views, you can see the things on a weekly basis that would irritate him.

A bland and unengaging commentary team.

Comedy segments with the likes of Goldust, Kane or R-Truth.

A heel authority figure running rampant and unchecked.

Women's wrestling, be it good or bad.

Spotty psychology, spotty selling, overuse of big moves when in his day a guy could finish a match with a suplex, and the typified WWE-style of producing a match.

The guy isn't completely wrong when he points certain things out, and he made his name with us fans for calling out Vince Russo, or calling out Eric Bischoff, or calling out the McMahons.

The problem is that it's 2016, and in 2016 the same old stories about what other people did wrong don't cut it. And at the same time, elements of modern wrestling have solidified and become available through the internet in a way old school wrestling simply hasn't. There has been no revival of the NWA, no revival of American rasslin', no weekly shows at the Louiville Garden or the Dallas Sportorium or what have you.

Instead of 2,000 fans packed in for a six-match card featuring local faces and maybe an appearance by a NWA-brand champion, you've got fifty to three hundred people watch a guy dressed as an ant fighting another guy with a jigsaw mask.

Jim thinks that happened because kayfabe died and people got smartened up and the wrestling as a sport presentation went to shit. While in part it did happen because of the WWE's domination of the North American industry, it also happened because we've got more oppurtunities and interests to get into than we did ten years ago, twenty years ago or thirty years ago. We've got more television programming than ever before, more big blockbuster movies than ever made. We've got other sports (combat or otherwise) available at the touch of a button and we've got interests that don't have anything to do with a live event of any kind.

People can travel the world, they can pursue hobbies and interests a generation before wouldn't have been likely or even existed. The world has quite simply changed so much in so many ways that much like say comic books (another American cultural relic), professional wrestling has shrunk from being a cultural, weekly pillar to simply being just another niche interest.

For a guy like Jim Cornette, that offends him, hurts him perhaps that something he dedicated his life to and was pretty successful at has become nothing more than a punchline for a lot of people who don't even know what he and many others accomplished for years on end. They told stories, they crafted heroes and defeated villains. Wars were fought in the squared circles, legacies and legends made in a night.

All that and more, but the guy on the street doesn't care. The guy on the street probably hears "professional wrestling" and thinks fake. Or make he thinks "Oh, that thing I watched as a kid". Or "Hulk Hogan?".

So Jim does what Jim does, which is criticize and lambast those who are in the business now, who are clearly doing something wrong because why else is the business in the shitter like it is?

Dunno, I could just be talking mad shit. But that's what it looks like to me, from the outside looking in.

/r/SquaredCircle Thread Parent