There’s little doubt that Jim Cornette stirs up controversy like a maestro with his music. He’s blunt, to the point, and explains his reasons. Not in too friendly a manner, and that’s where he gets his heat.
He’s an old guard protecting the business he loves from those that he views are destroying it through their lack of commitment, storytelling skills, or oddities that just make people scratch their heads at times.
As a result, Jim Cornette has made a decent name for himself by being honest about what he sees in wrestling. Lately, he’s targeted Kenny Omega as a booker.
Kenny Omega’s reported idea
Apparently, Omega’s newest idea (according to Dave Meltzer) is to have an intergender division in AEW (All Elite Wrestling). He and Riho recently beat Kip Sabian and Penelope Ford on the Jericho Rock ‘N’ Rager cruise.
As expected, Brian Last and Jim Cornette had a few opinions.
Cornette said he was afraid TNT would okay it, and to him, that’d promote further death in professional wrestling. He didn’t mince words on Omega (Olivier is Cornette’s nickname for him, referencing Laurence Olivier’s penchant for badly acting as fighters), “If they gave him his way, he’d probably wrestle the blow-up sex doll on TNT — I’m sure he’d do the nine-year old girl.”
He then said, “Now that he’s said that, I’m afraid they will do it, because TNT won’t care anything about what’s good for the business of wrestling, um and what’s not insulting to the wrestling fans. The only thing that will stop them is the domestic violence thing.”
Cornette went on to explain how it’s disrespectful and insulting to fans that like watching wrestling and getting lost in what we’re seeing.
To put things in perspective, in Japan there’s a professional wrestling promotion called Dramatic Dream Team (DDT) where they push the envelop by using a sex doll as a wrestler (named Yoshihiko). It’s a viable promotion in Japan much like Death Matches, but far more niche.
As for the nine-year-old girl comment, that was referring to a match Kenny Omega had with a, you guessed it, nine-year-old girl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTizPJj23QY
Bad blood
What doesn’t help the feud between Omega and Cornette is the history of issues between them. I don’t want to say bad blood, because it doesn’t seem to be that bad. Not like with Cornette and Russo. That’s at an epic level.
It started when the two first met back in 2006 at Ring of Honor. Cornette later said Omega reminded him of the Ultimate Warrior (Cornette was/is not a fan of Warrior), but he figured Omega was young and would continue to learn.
The following transcripted quotes are courtesy of wrestlinginc.com
“Here’s the thing about Kenny Omega, everybody knows that listens to the program regularly that I’ve had problems with him because of his activities in Japan, embarrassing the [professional] wrestling business, exposing it, and et cetera. But with Kenny Omega, I first saw Kenny Omega in Ring Of Honor, in 2006-ish, so, and, everybody was saying, ‘oh, this kid is great,’ and when I watched him live, he reminded me a lot of The Ultimate Warrior, the head-shaking, the goofy expressions, he had horrible basics. But you could tell the kid was a great athlete, and with experience, who knows what might happen?”
Add to that Kenny Omega’s no-show at a Ring of Honor event:
“[Omega] left Ring Of Honor and went to Japan. He’s Canadian originally, but he went to Japan and he would wrestle there quite a bit. And Adam Pearce, when Adam Pearce was booking Ring Of Honor, booked Kenny Omega for Final Battle, I believe it was 2009. It was Final Battle 2009 in New York. And I was helping Adam at the time and he emailed me one time before the show, ‘oh, look at this’, he forwarded the email. He said, ‘Omega can’t show up – he [has] hurt his ankle or foot and he sent this email.’ And Omega sent an emailing saying, ‘I can’t be there at Final Battle. I’m injured.’ And he sent a picture of this f–ked up ankle and foot. It looked f–king horrible. It looked like he had gangrene. I don’t know what the f–k. And I even, at the time, wrote back, ‘is that even his f–king ankle, Adam, because that looks f–king horrible?’ And Adam said, ‘that’s all I’ve got and he ain’t going to be there.’ So of course Omega worked in Japan that weekend, so he didn’t even have the f–king guts or ability in him to be honest with a guy that had booked him, a company that had booked him early in his career to say, ‘I’ve got a booking in Japan – that’s my priority,’ which would have been understood. But instead, he lied and sent this bogus f–king picture of somebody else’s f–king foot. Where do you get that? I don’t even know. And so that’s why he didn’t show up at Ring Of Honor anymore, because he was written off because he was a lying sack of s–t that no-showed a booking under false pretenses instead of being honest.”
And on the matches Omega had in Japan that we learned more about in our research to be true.
“Then, of course, he had those matches with the blow-up doll and f–king nine year old girl. I’m not even kidding, folks. If you’re just listening to The Experience for the first time, the f–king guy had competitive matches in front of ticket-purchasing patrons in Japan with a blow-up doll and a nine year old little girl.”
Those three alone violate the principles Jim Cornette and many others hold dear when it comes to professional wrestling. It’s understandable that the two aren’t going to see eye to eye anytime soon as the battle between Old School and New School continues
New Era on the horizon?
To be fair, as much as Jim Cornette’s criticisms are warranted, I do understand the thinking behind what Kenny Omega’s choices. He wants to help professional wrestling take an evolutionary step, which isn’t a bad thing. The problem comes when we’re so blinded to moving something forward that we don’t stop to think if this will hurt it.
Kinda reminds me of Jeff Goldblum’s scene in Jurassic Park about whether something should be done or not.
This is the crux of the argument between the Old School (Jim Cornette) and the New School or Era. Both sides make excellent points, and there has to be a meeting in the middles somewhere. The biggest problem in this case is Omega is one of the five people running AEW. It’s hard for me to believe Cody Rhodes would go along with something that could hurt the business and even AEW, but the Young Bucks and Tony Kahn are X-factors. While they’re young, they’re also smart and can be a great balance to Omega’s enthusiasm.
In the end, it’s about putting on the best show possible for the fans, but which base are they going to target?
Wrestling matches have become more like video games with big moves for the sake of big moves instead of telling a story, but do we care enough about the characters we’re seeing to ignore the lack of logic in seeing a kid, blow up doll, or 100 pound woman defeat a giant monster of a man?
That’s a question that’s going to take some time to answer.
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