It’s been a week now since the episode of NWA Powerrr aired on YouTube in which Jim Cornette made a racist joke that was quickly edited out of the episode and led to Cornette losing that commentary gig. Naturally other members of the wrestling community have made their opinions on the matter known in the meantime, like Mark Henry.
Today, former WCW President (and short-lived Executive Director of Smackdown) Eric Bischoff offered his opinion on the matter, as a veteran of Southern Wrestling himself. On his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff had this to say about Cornette’s firing from NWA Powerrr:
Obviously it’s unfortunate all the way around. It’s unfortunate for Jim. Jim and I probably don’t see eye-to-eye in a lot of respects, but in so many respects, I find Jim to be a very entertaining and compelling person to listen to, but he takes it too far. This isn’t 1960. This isn’t 1970. This isn’t even the 1980s or the early 1990s. Times have changed. We all have to change with it. Everything about our lives have changed, particularly here in the media. Jim is a guy that is just reluctant to adapt. and it’s really unfortunate because he’s a talented guy, he’s an entertaining guy, and he’s a very knowledgable guy, but if you’re not willing to evolve, and grow, and understand the implications of some of the things you do and say and how it effects other people adversely, you’re gonna get put out to pasture, and I hope that doesn’t happen to Jim but that kind of is what it appears to be. I don’t know where he goes from here.
Meanwhile, Kenny Omega of AEW, a frequent target of Cornette’s ire, offered his opinion during an appearance on Wrestling Observer Radio. What’s interesting is how it pretty much lines up with Bischoff’s, just from a younger perspective.
It’s sad, I never want to wish ill upon someone. I do believe that that’s sort of a generational thing in the case of Jim. It was, he dug down deep and pulled out one of the age-old lines that he’s used time and time and time again, whether it be from the ’70s or ’80s, or whatever it was, when it first made its debut. And I think without thinking, you know, he was saying something that just isn’t acceptable in today’s world. And you know, it speaks volumes, it really does, to his way of thinking, his line of thinking. Even you know, how kind of carnie he is in the way he conducts his business. It’s just not accepted anymore. It’s too negative, it’s too toxic.
Omega went on to say that Cornette will land somewhere else in wrestling, because “people tend to forget things,” but Bischoff was less optimistic about Cornette’s future prospects:
There’s a certain point where you become too volatile to do business with, and the more bridges you burn in social media, and the world of entertainment, like I said earlier, where do you go from here? Who is going to hire him? At this point, probably nobody.
Whatever else happens, Cornette still has his own podcast and that corner of the wrestling internet that loves him, so I’m sure he’ll be fine.
(transcripts courtesy of 411Mania)
