Legendary pro wrestling booker, promoter, and manager Jim Cornette was a guest on Figure Four Daily this morning at F4WOnline.com. Jim talked about what his life has been like since retiring, more or less, from active duty in the wrestling business.
"2013 was the first year that I could actually say, in a long time, that I achieved everything that I wanted to do in the course of a year. I lost over 50 pounds. I got down to 195 – I was absolutely skinny in the summertime. I'm back to 205 because of the winter weight. But I'm eating clean … Apparently, even though I've had the world's worst diet for the past 30 or 40 years, I'm somehow in somewhat good condition. I got off the road. I put 35,000 miles on my vehicle in 2012, and 7,000 in 2013; that was a goal. I reduced 100+ nights in a hotel to about 18; that was a big goal."
Cornette also had a lot of great stories to tell about Hall of Famer Mae Young, who passed away recently.
"What an incredible life, story, woman, etc. Moolah and Mae at one time ran the Ladies International Wrestling Association out in Vegas. She did one in Boston and honored Killer Kowalski, and she asked me to come up because she knew I was a mark for all the legends. I have a picture of me, Moolah, Mae and Kowalski – I did not deserve to be there, but I got that picture. But then they had the wrestling show, and Mae worked on it. She was 74. She took a slam off the top rope! Like Ric Flair! She bounced literally like you had thrown a piece of meat on a hard marble surface, but then got right back up. The guys weren't working that hard in this ring."
Jim Cornette was brought into Ring of Honor in 2009 as the executive producer of their new TV deal with HDNet. However, creative differences arose, Cornette claims his ideas were ignored, and he left the company entirely in 2012.
"You had to be competitive on television. We knew we didn't have a WWE budget, or even a TNA budget, but the television had to look like we were trying. We didn't have touring locations that would stand up to scrutiny on television. The original concept was to do what we did in OVW, but on a bigger scale. Find our own facility, whether it be an old Target store or a warehouse. Paint it black, wooden risers, bring in chairs, customize it to seat 750 people, colored lights and directions, wire the building for audio, etc. That facility would have housed the offices, the editing equipment for post-production, storage for equipment – all under one roof where you could have your tapings whenever you wanted them. This is the manner in which I thought the TV show would be shot … And then people just stopped talking about the building."
You can check out the all-new and revamped JimCornette.com for more, including his new Kickstarter project, merchandise, podcasts and more.
Subject: Jim Cornette Talks Life After Wrestling 
