Tracy Smothers was the epitome of the perfect Smoky Mountain hero. He was legitimate.
Jim Cornette
Johnny Valentine's the one who said, 'I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real.' It would take him forever because he was just stinkingly boring for 30 minutes of the 40-minute match, but he would let people hit him as hard as they could, and he would hit people as hard as he could.
For the people who are offended about the fact that we have a bunch of criminals and criminal enablers and buffoons and scheisters and con men and frauds and real estate frauds running our country and our government, they like to hear that they're not the only ones that feel that way.
It's a tossup on whether WWE is going to insult your intelligence, religion or sexual preference. It's become a joke and a farce.
I know Vince made the call for Roman Reigns to win the Royal Rumble and be the guy. We know that much. I don't know what knucklehead didn't say to Vince that maybe we shouldn't put Daniel Bryan in the Royal Rumble.
Lio Rush, this little guy is a perfect heel manager, updated for modern times.
We would get VHS tapes from wrestlers who wanted to come to Smoky Mountain. I got this tape from a guy called Lance Storm who I saw leaping from the top rope and cutting these great dropkicks. And the kid Chris Jericho he was with wasn't too bad either.
Trevor Murdoch is mad, bad and dangerous. He's the only man I know that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia.
Nick Aldis is a great champion. He looks like a professional athlete. He dresses like one. He carries it well.
Two things I have never done and never plan to do are catch Coronavirus or meet Jelly Nutella in person.
Life is too short to have anybody named McMahon in mine.
Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler's match was the one thing people believed most about wrestling in the last 35 years.
I had always in the past thought The Ultimate Warrior was the epitome of a guy making money with no talent.
Eddie Marlin was a big deal for a long time to a lot of people.
People always say, 'You can't go home again,' but every time I go to the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest in Charlotte, it feels like I have.
I loved Houston. Those fans would go ballistic.
It's said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In that case, the WWE 'creative' team must be as crazy as a rainbow trout in a car wash.
Without talent, I don't care how funny the writers are or how many comedy lines they come up, without wrestlers you can't have a wrestling program.
I feel like there's no reason to put myself through what I put myself through for 20-something years on airplanes, especially these days. You don't know whether your pilot is going to drop dead over the ocean; you don't know when you try to land whether the wheels are going to come down; you can be searched and seized and detained and quarantined.
Vince McMahon has the worst inferiority complex of anybody in history.
Dana Brooke's entire face looks like it was remodeled after somebody set fire to it and put it out with an axe.
The Midnight Express and the Rock 'n' Roll Express were the greatest tag team rivalry of all time and drew more money than any other tag team rivalry probably in history, and I did manage the WWF champion and WWF Tag Team champion at different points in time but my phone hasn't rung and I haven't lost sleep over it.
MMA and the UFC have taken all of the pro wrestling fans because it's pro wrestling from 30 years ago, just in an Octagon and the fights happen to be real. But they're marketed exactly the same way.
I eliminated stress by eliminating people that I don't enjoy working with.
I would never commit acts of domestic or family violence, stalking or sex offenses against Vince Russo or his household members or any other kind of member that he might have hanging around. Never would I do such a thing. I swear to that.
In the old days, talent owned their costumes, their intellectual property, their gimmicks. They were not employees and could wrestle anywhere they wanted to, and that just is not case in today's WWE.
I came along the decade after the generation where a lot of heels were still getting stabbed, so I was always looking for it. I had a bullet-proof vest in a couple places.
In 1986, wrestling was so huge in Charlotte that we did four events at the Coliseum with the Rock 'N' Roll and the Midnights in a 10-week period - and sold almost 45,000 tickets and drew almost $400,000 at the gate.
The fans in Lake Charles, La., were crazy. The Freebirds would get their tires cut, so they started driving to the police station and having the police bring them to the show. The fans then cut the tires on the police car that brought The Freebirds.
People that lie to me generally get banished or vanished to the planet Pluto in my mind.
I'm not looking to be a superstar. That's why I'm positioned as the face of TNA.
I've seen inside fans' houses, and they would have pictures of Jesus on the wall, and next to it would be a picture of The Rock 'n' Roll Express. That's no lie.
Since I left the wrestling business and got in the Jim Cornette business, my blood pressure is down considerably.
There's no casual wrestling fan anymore.
Probably the biggest-kept secret about 'Ring of Honor' is that when you go to see a live show - I've had people in their 60s from down in North Carolina that have seen a lot of wrestling tell me that it was the greatest live wrestling show they've ever been to. The atmosphere is off the charts.
I thought the Rousey match was the best major league debut in the history of wrestling. They did the right thing at the right time at the right pace and took people on a roller coaster ride. That, to me, was a pro wrestling match. I couldn't find fault with it, except I wish that Ronda had come out with her game face on when she did her entrance.
You can make kids and fans happy without calling them on the court in the last three minutes of the NBA Finals.
I'm the only person in wrestling that realizes I'm too old to do this anymore, and that's why I'm not a performer and I'm not going to be on 'ROH.'
People naturally want to see two interesting people - one that they're predisposed possibly to like and one that they're predisposed to dislike - have a fight and see who wins.
Amateur wrestling was never considered a big box office draw because they're really competing but they're not getting a chance to call each other 16 kinds of names before the fight to get you interested.
I think people are realizing that whereas now the 'Ultimate Fighting Championship' has taken over what people used to like about pro wrestling in the '70s and '80s. We just want to see who's going to fight for the title.
The Rock 'n' Roll Express and the '80s NWA crew; Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen, Magnum TA, Dusty Rhodes - that was a great crew of talent and they were all so great to work with.
One of the greatest matches I ever saw was Jerry Lawler against Terry Funk in the Memphis Midsouth Coliseum, but there was Flair vs. Steamboat in Nashville back in '89.
I've always been a fan of Bobby Roode's.
You have to look like an athlete and you have to look like you could whip somebody. And let's face it, unfortunately Shawn Michaels couldn't whip anybody in a real fight as proven with every single fight he's ever gotten into with everybody in the business.
I would love to see TNA get a developmental program.
The way that you teach wrestling is by finding good talent that you think can learn and putting them in the ring with a variety of other good talents who have experience and giving them the opportunity to pick things up.
Every wrestling show is now designed to be the greatest show ever. In contrast, the NWA show is different. It didn't tire people out to watch, something was allowed to register. It is the exact antithesis of planned, big budget, choreographed, scripted sports entertainment, and that is what makes the show so different.
Cowboy James Storm and Eli Drake, those guys can talk and rile the people up.
Maybe Rock and Elizabeth Warren could team up and shore up each other's weaknesses. Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything and all the experience, and The Rock could sell it to the people, 'cause the people could smell what Rock is cooking.
