No, it would actually give the AEW army something credible to actually have against Corny. You'd see Tweet after tweet of "Hey, didn't you hate AEW Cornette"? Go back on your word, did ya?" and stuff like that.
Yea he never hated Paul Heyman, Jim Cornette says Heyman was the best at getting wrestlers strengths and hiding the weaknesses only thing Cornette had with Heyman was he was horrible with money
@@Kas58223 IDK, if you listen to the older Cornette podcasts before Brian Last was involved Jim was harsh on Paul. His stance softened a lot over time, same with his take on Bischoff... but that had a lot more ground to make up.
@@thomasanthony5306 Both wrestling promoters, both managers, both known for their mic work, both highly opinionated about wrestling and booking. A lot in common for "complete opposites".
@@bubbafug00gle51 I tend to go to that Ole Anderson quote - "Cornette I used to think you were a dumb fuck, then so many other dumb fucks came along you went down the list" - that probably explains Cornys relationship with Heyman, WAY more people came along he hated more....
@@jeffreyriley8742 Not knocking you personally, but I don't get this outlook. Anyone can piss and moan about how "back in my day..." and "these kids today...". But very few people have the combination of experience, insight and hindsight that Cornette does. For me, his unique perspective is the only thing that separates him from any other asshole who wants to spout off.
Basically Cornette wanted to be the Wisconsin Dells... Heyman wanted to be Disney... they both ended up being Santa's Village. Credit them both with having the balls to try
I sure do miss SMW....Being in my late teens early 20s at the time I loved it sooo much...Dirty White Boy was my favorite wrestler in that promotion.....Looking back on it now, if I were rich (now knowing Cornette ran it) I'd have asked him if he'd let me invest in SMW to help keep it going to this day if possible....Jim with SMW gave me all the feels of JCP/NWA....good quality matches....old school basic storyline grudges, simple concepts, no stupid, dumb unnecessary BS like today, budget friendly for me since I am disabled.....Thank you Jim...I have many cherished memories between Lenoir, NC and West Jefferson, NC with SMW...I will never forget them...
One wanted to shock the system and buck the establishment, the other wanted to take things back to a regional, no nonsense anti cartoon wrestling feel. Ultimately both wanted a product vastly different than either the WWF or WCW. Neither one will go down as "good business men" but both have awesome minds and have made huge impacts in the industry.
Timing is huge in life, especially in business. Had Jim opened the Smokey Mountain Wrestling territory in 1996 instead of 1992, then Jim would've been able to cash in on the late 90's wrestling boom. Unfortunately, when Jim started Smokey Mountain, the wrestling business in general was in a huge down period after it reached such tremendous heights during the 1980s. I think that things would've been very interesting had Jim still been in business during the WWF's Attitude Era. Business would have been good, cause the crowds would've been huge! Jim's southern territory would've been a great alternative to WCW's mostly southern territory (yes, I know that WCW was national, but they were based in the south). So when things got really bad for WCW in the late 90's and then with WCW closing in the new millennium, Jim would've been in the perfect place at the perfect time to, for lack of a better word, "replace" WCW (in the south anyway). So I can't really say that Jim was a terrible businessman, cause if he did everything exactly the same, but instead of starting in 1992, he started in 1996, then his territory would've been very successful. Who knows, he might even still be in business today?
I grew up with one of the greatest wrestlers in the business. He made me promise to never bring up his name in social media so I don't. Jim, I asked him about you once and he spoke so very highly with you. He said you would pay "the talent" before you even bought a sandwich for yourself. From there on out I have been a big fan of yours. Send your best wishes my way as I am in a Texas Death Match with a type of cancer called Multiple Myeloma. Doing pretty good and we are learning a lot from my case. Never mind that. Just know that real people in the know call you a fine man. I enjoy your style and what you do. Respects to you, Sir. The first N.W.A. champion I remember was Dory Funk, Jr. so that makes me pretty damned old !!!!!! Bless sir for all of your entertainment.
I also have Multiple Myeloma. Started 10 years ago this month, 28 years old to now 38. Hope you are doing well a year later. I'm also a good patient from a teaching/research capacity. Had about a dozen different chemo regiments and an autologous stem cell transplant (none of it worked long time, transplant had me feeling like a zombie in molasses ). Thankfully I've been in remission for about 3.5 years after my CarT Therapy. 💪💪
He told The Sinister Minister, James Mitchell he was writing a book I dont know if it came out. the question he asked him was how did he fired him and then started talking about losing his day job and went on a drunk dial. Paul Heyman called him and asked if it was true that Smoky Mountain was going out of business. It caused Jim to call him all pissed and let him know that Wade Keller of the Wrestling Torch cost him a deal with a TV station in Virginia because the station's manager son had seen the publication.
Why? It was a rag tag rinky dink promotion that barely ran a half decade. As much as this dude rags on the Young Bucks they've made so much more money and sold so many more tickets even before Tony Khan (All In) even in a supposedly dead period in the industry.
@@duckmercy11 maybe so but I like reading about the history of wrestling. I don’t agree with everything that he has to say about AEW or the people who work there though.
@@duckmercy11 well that's certainly one way for you to have the point go right through your head and out the back without getting it. Fucking Milli Vinilli sold a lot of tickets.
The main difference between the two wrestling geniuses is simple. Jim genuinely cared for the people who worked for him and gave up his dream of having a promotion to take care of them. Paul E SOLD HIS TALENT OUT, and cast them into debt, running to WWE for himself only. (After having his talent ran through sharp furniture factories weekly for years) Corny has a heart.. Rare to see in any business, let alone wrestling.
@@BedlamInThePentagramYeah, geniuses bankrupt their own fucking promotion, and write needlessly controversial cucking storylines that bury everyone involved in it..
@@chadk890 it wasnt real at all for George Tragos , a REAL Wrestler-martial artist who predicted catch wrestling (THE REAL ART) would be replaced by fat f cks failed football players doing fake slow boring barfights (looking at ric flair vs dusty rhodes (RIP, but still, it has to be said.))
Jerry Lawler was so hated in ECW.. If he came there and did business against Shane Douglas that would have sold tickets and put money in everybody's pockets..
The thing is that ECW had more visible markers of apparent success (national TV, PPV, running bigger venues, playing in major urban markets etc.) in the eyes of the average fan before it went under. That colors many people's perception of the relative success of the two promotions. Cornette wasn't trying to do those things, but it makes SMW look less impressive on paper.
@@gold2040 LOL.. Thanks alot for that clip!..I thought New Jack and The Undertaker of all people in the same ring was a MYTH! Just total opposite's of each other character wise.
To be fair to Paul, Smokey Mountain never had video game licensing, national TV distribution, national and international toy distribution, home video licensing, PPV, etc... Smokey Mountain also didn't have WWF and WCW sniping their talent constantly during a massive wrestling boom, so Corny didn't need to pay people astronomical amounts of money. Jim also never had a PPV company just up and decide not to pay him for a full six months of PPVs, which was one of two catalysts for ECW going bankrupt. On Demand owed ECW millions at the time they filed bankruptcy, and were able to resolve that debt for pennies on the dollar.
Indeed. National television distribution with no advertising revenue and no attempt to manifest it. National television distribution they paid for and never received any revenue from. 3 am Wednesday morning airings on the Sunshine network didn't exactly have Taz and Dreamer laughing to the bank. To be fair to Corny To also be fair to Corny, the intent, the business plan, never involved any of those things mentioned above. SMW at its inception was designed for what it was. The re-establishment of regional territory wrestling.
How my friends and I felt seeing all the ECW guys going to WWF and WCW must have been the same way that people felt in the early 80s when Vince was poaching from everywhere: You were happy to see your favorites doing much better for themselves, but it left a void in your home territory.
Why? That’s when wrestling was still cool! It didn’t suck til years later! Honestly the 80s was all wwf all those territories was trash. Nwa was the only one to keep up n the awa was good but on its way out. I loved seeing all the new n under used talent go to wwf n become stars.
I'm surprised that TNA/Impact has lasted as long as it had despite Russo, Dixie Carter, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff etc trying to tank it, they keep producing the product they have and I guess you can say that it's all due to Jeff Jarrett.
ECW went out of business while selling out all their merch and selling out their shows. They grew too big too fast (almost out of necessity) and Heyman had to pay far more money to retain talent because WCW and WWE were trying to steal them. It was too small to be big and too big to be small. SMW didn't lose as much money but they also never seemed like anything more than a local regional territory. Nothing special and there are local shows out the national guard armory which you never heard of who lost less than Cornette.
@@jessepaiz6356 the shit he did with Chris Candido bugs me. I can see not paying guys because you don't have the money but having them put stuff on their credit card for your business is really a scumbag thing to do. Seems like Heyman really needed someone like Todd Gordon to reign him in. They said when he left is when the financial issues started.
@Skippy Skipperson honestly I respect Cornette's wrestling knowledge and I saw an interview he did about his time in ROH and I think he would be a valuable member on any roster just for his sheer depth of experience in so many different roles. I never was a SMW fan. I caught it on a local channel that showed a different indie every night of the week, however it felt like another standard indie to me with cheap production values. ECW on the other hand felt like a real alternative and a far fresher alternative (of course I was 15 in PA so I wasn't there audience). ECW made waves, SMW never seemed to. ECW was Nirvana to SMW's tribute 80s hairband in the 90s. I honestly was just trying to make a point about how you can't always judge success by how much money you lost. WCW lost more than ECW, ECW lost more than SMW and SMW lost more than a local indie. ECW was in a weird place. He made a huge mark on the industry and people were stealing his talent almost as quick as they could and he had to adapt probably much more than he would have liked. I honestly don't want to crap on Cornette just trying to make a point.
Some people seem to confuse business acumen with booking and promotional knowledge just to discredit Cornette and Heyman. It was always common knowledge that Paul was playing three card-monty running ECW's finances and Cornette admitted here he was never a captain of industry. Heyman and Cornette always had good minds for the business and are probably the last of the guys who learned from a lot of the people who were successful during the territory days and managed to run promotions that at least garnered a lot of attention during their run and are still talked about and debated over twenty years later. Even if you want to play devil's advocate and say the failure of their companies diminishes their credibility to critic wrestling now, that would put almost anyone else who used to book wrestling and does not anymore in the same boat. And if people really want to get technical about it Vince McMahon is probably no different from Cornette or Heyman in that he bought into an established promotion and leveraged it to be a success with the help of Linda who is known to be the financial brains behind that operation.
It's often been said that Vince McMahon is one of the worse bookers in the world but undoubtedly the best promoter. WWE was only really good when Vince surrounded himself with people like Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco who would figure out the details of the bookings and matches, as those types of guys either passed away or retired or left to do other things the quality of the shows slowly started to get worse. But Vince is capable of promoting the hell out of anything no matter how shit it is, and knows how to maximize money from every opportunity.
It's amazing Jim & Hayman never really joined forces... I know opposite worlds but with Jims heart and knowledge, and Paul's insane gift for bullshit talk and one step ahead style of booking and getting the best out of guys I think these two would make some noise in the business in terms of truly competing with Vince in the early 90s. Food for thought.
Michal Action - I can't wait for "The Fall of Smokey Mountain" documentary to come out.... Smokey Mountain didn't exactly fall... it just kind of sat down and didn't bother getting back up.
@@bubbafug00gle51 it seems the "fall of SMW" would be a working title in reality.😂 Maybe a title like "The Way You Like It: The Story of Smokey Mountain Wrestling" would be a good one for an SMW documentary. Either way, it'd be a really good documentary.
Wait a minute... Rick Rubin. As in Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Slayer, Def Jam/American, now big-shot engineer for Johnny Cash, Metallica etc... He was SMW's main backer?? 🤯
At the end of the day although I've been watching Cornette since early 1990 in WCW (Right before they left) and he had a good run in WWE & created Smokey Mountain. His legacy to me is running OVW & giving us Cena, Batista, & Brock!
Great topic, but how weird are the parallels between Heyman and Corny? From their characters as managers, to the Midnights stuff, to ECW/SMW, and I just realized their birthdays are less than a week apart. I’ve seen Paul described as the bizarro world Cornette, but it’s funny when you actually dig in and examine it.
I’m pretty sure Jim Ross summed it up best. Jim cornette is the southern Paul heyman Paul heyman is the New Yorker Jim cornette. Neither one will ever be willing to admit it though.
I respect both approaches to some extent. I admire Heyman’s ambition to try and run a huge competitor to the WWF and WCW. I wouldn’t take that sort of risk running a business so I can respect that. However, in order to do it, he seems to have ripped a lot of people off who were working for him. Cornette stayed small and paid basically all his debts, only him and Rick Rubin ended up losing money. Didn’t seem like he took the big risks that might have made the business more successful though.
It's not really a fair comparison though SMW went out of business before wrestling had its mini-boom period ECW didn't really become popular until the Monday Night Wars brought more attention to the business as a whole and had a positive impact on the growth of all wrestling promotions. Cornette has mentioned before if only he'd had a crystal ball he'd have been able to stay open 18 months longer and would have been able to capitalize.
The issue with the ECW tape library and RF video was that Heyman had basically made a deal with RF where he could sell everything ECW ever had on video and there was no time clause in it. The Commercial tapes, the TV shows, the PPVs, the fancam releases EVERYTHING. There was absolutely nothing Vince could do about it once they realised the deal existed, which was after the WWE bought it, although I could be wrong on that. Which is why RF can still sell them to this day. Although, they are completely unedited, so you're much better off going there than viewing the butchered Network versions.
There are some limitations on RF Video's deal with ECW. - RF didn't have access to ECW's professional master tapes, so in terms of professionally shot ECW content, RF is limited to whatever made it to TV. If ECW taped something with their cameras but didn't air it, WWE has that footage but RF does not. The exception is Holiday Hell 2000, the last card at ECW Arena. ECW's production crew made a copy of the event at the time for Tommy Dreamer. In 2013, Dreamer gave his copy to RF, who now sells it. - The TV episodes, PPVs, and home video releases RF sells today are clearly sourced from VHS recordings he made at the time. They have tracking lines, buzzing, etc. With the ECW PPV events, he just ordered the shows, put a blank tape in the VCR, and hit record.
@@Rjensen2 I have ordered plenty of ECW from RF Video. The sound/video quality is awful compared to when the exact same content is shown by WWE because WWE has ECW's master tapes while RF sells ECW stuff that he taped with his VCR back when they originally aired.
@@Rjensen2 I have every ECW Home Video release on DVD from RF Video. They are clearly VHS-to-VHS-to-DVD copies based on the degraded quality. The picture and sound is much better on WWE Network because WWE has ECW's master tapes.
Found this "2 Bankruptcy At the time of their closing, ECW owed more than $500,000 to at least 40 performers. The promotion's total debt was roughly $7.5 million, with nearly $4 million of that debt being owed to the Heyman family"
Paul Heyman Ran a Wrestling Federation and still lived at home with His Mom & Dad!!!! He cut promos in his Basement and His Mom was doing Laundry in the background!!!!
Sam Muchnick of St. Louis never went out of business, he retired, sold his interests, and then the new management ran wrestling's #1 city for decades right into the ground within 18 months. It ended up being the easiest of Vince McMahon's early takeovers.
the biggest difference between ECW and Smoky Mountain is before the bankruptcy ECW was profitable for a couple years Smoky Mountain never made any money
I'm a liberal and sometimes I catch my self being a little conservative.. Because you on the left of things doesn't mean you agree with everything left wing.. Jim and I feel more at home on the left and that's okay.. If anybody feel more at home on the right then that's okay too.. Don't let nobody change you and you shouldn't try to change anybody either.. Simple as that..
maxx dahl : what "insurrection"? A few trespassers entering the Capitol after being let in by the police to take selfies? They even stayed within the velvet rope line inside the Capitol. Some "insurrection". Those guys were pikers compared to Susan Rosenberg, who actually set off a bomb inside the Capitol in 1981 and sat in jail before being pardoned by slick willie Clinton in 1996. Ms. Rosenberg currently sits on the board of the marxist group that calls itself b l a c k lives matter. A real insurrection would involve a group of miscreants actually taking over a section of a city and calling it an "autonomous zone" and preventing police & emergency vehicles from entering resulting in deaths. Oh, that did actually happen during the "summer of love" in Seattle, but the media described it as a " peaceful protest".
Yeah. And also I really believe that Lucha Underground was trying to be a hybrid version of ECW, but everyone knows that when something gets hot shotted too much, the bottom falls off. The first 3 seasons of Lucha Underground were good but season 4 was when Lucha Underground as a whole jumped the shark. Another thing, when you think of Lucha Libre, you think of wrestlers from Mexico, but the only true Mexican stars were Sexy Star, Pentagon Jr, Fenix, Vampiro, and Alberto El Patron. The other guys were just under masks, for example: Prince Puma was Ricochet, Killshot was Swerve Strickland, Matanza was Jeff Cobb and Mil Muertes was El Mesias. I know Lucha Underground was trying to be a new promotion but it didn't work.
@@dylansargent5682 yeah but the only thing is that the violence escalated to the point where people turned away from it. The other thing I didn't like was the fans were called "believers" like seriously? Call them what they really are which is FANS.
Lot of what if’s and so on but you don’t want to live with regrets. I think the key difference as discussed was Smokey was a territory run on a business model; ecw was fly by the seat of our pants let’s throw everything against the wall to get to the next level. Great talk.
@@bluntamainia444 Channel 48 on my old CRT that had an antenna and the two knobs for channels. Same channel used to play anime & shit & also had other wrestling territories' TVs on like USWA. It was great.
For me it was on the Spanish channel at like 1 am in the northeast. I'll be an og ecw fan till I croak. Went to a tv taping and house show when they went to tnn
I remember it was on a few channels, first was the “sports network” of Philadelphia and that later became the modern Comcast sports channel, then it went to Gtv48 which was owned by a music studio in Philadelphia and it would air music videos that MTV wouldn’t and it had old tv shows, sex hotline commercials and ECW on after 11, then the Mega Churches bought the station and its been a religious channel ever since...
There was an independent station in Ashland, KY that would have reached the Huntington market. I believe The Sheik ran for awhile on 61 during BTW's glory days.
I'm sorry. I can appreciate SMW but if anyone thinks that ECW wasn't revolutionary for the business is kidding themselves. SMW wouldn't fly in the Northeast at all in the 90s. ECW was wayyyy bigger and better than SMW on its best day.
If only I had a time machine. I'd have won the lottery and given Jim all the money he needed. He never will but I'd love for him to start a promotion again and do wrestling his way.
Man, Rick Rueben was a great backer. Seems like he just wanted to see it work out for Jim and the boys, no greed, no micro managing, just happy if they could break even.
But unfortunately there were some instances of Jim having to pay guys out of his pocket on money that he was short on if you recall. Because Ruben was in California and his money wouldn't go far enough.
@@Connor-ki8zv Yeah but Rick Rubin was basically donating his money to Jim, he never expected to make a profit. When someone is funding you just to support old school wrestling you can't keep asking them for more. Though it does show that Smoky Mountain was such a unpromising business enterprise than Jim probably couldn't have gotten traditional financing from those who would have expected a return.
The trolls won't want to admit it, but this is what makes Cornette's podcast so good. Just like how he wishes they would have a separate show for women's wrestling so he wouldn't have to watch it, I wish he did a separate show for his modern wrestling criticisms. Because when he goes into story time mode, it's an excellent listen.
What a mess the ECW closing was. It’s weird because their final months in business, you couldn’t find an empty seat in the arena. Bubba Ray and Tommy Dreamer also mentioned a truck-full of merch pulling up, and said truck being empty at the end, with THOUSANDS of cash in hand
ECW was on national cable, regional sports networks, PPV and toured in a far broader area than SMW ever hoped to. I don't criticize Cornette for failing with SMW...I criticize him because he calls people out for doing stupid shit that mocks the business when he did more than his share of that stuff himself
@@TheMagnificentMongoSlade How does going bankrupt equate to "making more money"? Do you have a job or run a business? Nobody gives a fuck about money you _used_ to have.
@@henrygvidonas9573 Cornette was in debt, gave up. Decided the venture wasn't worth it anymore. Heyman was in debt, filed for bankruptcy. You don't even need figures for this. Cornette could've filed for bankruptcy but chose to walk away. Heyman initially tried to save ECW by filing chapter 11 (reorganization), to give himself time to pay back his debts. Later, he refiled under chapter 7 and decided to just liquidate the assets. Heyman made millions (though he also lost millions). If you listen to cornette's own account of SMW finances he never had the cash Heyman did. Never. SMW never made PPV, didn't have national TV and wasn't on in bigger markets either (whether by design or otherwise). So yes, Heyman made more money-- he also lost more money.
Not only that, but I feel like a lot of people defending SMW here in the comments never actually watched an episode of it before. SMW would never last, people wanted change. SMW felt outdated back when it was running, imagine how it would have fared against WWF, WCW or ECW in the late 90s. At least Paul had the balls to innovate and go after the big companies. And let's be honest, without ECW there wouldn't have been an attitude era or even a ruthless aggression era. I respect Corny and his vision, but wrestling needed to change
That's what they should have done back in the Attitude Era once a month have one of your mega stars come over to Smoky Mountain sell out the shows and then switch guys and now you've got a whole new brand bringing in massive money with a low budget.. But you would need to bring them in for an entire month so the story could run its course. They could have brought in huge money for a minor league wrestling program
A big name/s from the WWE going to Smoky Mountain for a few months once a year would have kept them fresh plus helped SMW out meaning Vince would have had a smaller promotion to send developmental talent to. Same as with ECW
If we are doing ECW vs Smoky Mountain...Lets be real ECW did way better than Smoky mountain. ECW was 3rd biggest promotion after WCW. Smoky Mountain wrestling was never competitive. It was just a small regional promotion. So if you want to be honest ECW was a far more successful venture than Smoky Mountain
Yeah ECW was bigger doesn't mean it was better. Having strippers, throwing guys off 20 foot high stages onto flaming tables, yeah that's going to get attention doesn't make it good. I loved ECW back in the late 90's/early 2000's but when I go back and watch their stuff now it doesn't hold up whereas Smoky Mountain does pass the test of time in fact it's become even better for me.
I wonder if Verne could have done something similar to that to keep the AWA alive. And as much as some people gripe about I Cs (independent contractor) this is how the TV game works.
Honestly imo part of the reason that ECW went bankrupt and to the point where people were owed money was the fact that Heyman tried to take a somewhat regional promotion in Eastern Championship Wrestling changing it to Extreme Championship Wrestling and trying to take it on a national level and when they signed with TNN (The Nashville Network )and at best they were pulling in a 0.8 rating lumped in between Rollerjam and Rock 'N Bowl and they were expected to do a 2.0 rating and Heyman was supposed to give them new programming from the start and the 1st show was a best of show w/ RVD Vs Jerry Lynn from Hardcore Heaven '99 and Taz Vs Rhino from a recent house show it was a bad start from the beginning plus Heyman was making deals for videotape/dvd distribution and action figures when he could barely pay his guys to begin with plus Fed Ex'ing his shows to the tv channels across the country which cost him a fortune and expanding his product into new areas . They did a show in Canada (Missaauga , Ontario ) which i was present for which was a tv taping and from what i have heard they had to use the money from the t-shirt sales to pay the guys . Basically Heyman was taking on more than he or his pocketbook could handle therefore owing millions of dollars to wrestlers and ppv companies witholding money and the situation with rights to the videotape library which i know that RF Video has rights to since they were the dub house and did fancam videos for the ECW house shows and WWE has rights to some of the video library as well . At least with Cornette and SMW it was a regional promotion and was meant to be that with Rick Rubin putting in some of his money not really expecting it back and aside from attempting to get tv in areas that he thought he could make money Cornette knew what his limitations were and never let it get to the point that it got to where he couldn't pay people without going into bankruptcy in doing it Have seen some of the SMW product and i think if given a chance it could have done somewhat good on national tv for fans that liked good ol' southern wrestling or just wrestling in general .ECW was perfect for the 90's with that combo of brutal no holds barred wrestling with that hardcore rock n roll edge that spit in the face of the watered down kid friendly WWF and the corporate WCW . Was afan of ECW and still am and have many vhs.dvds of theirs in my collection . Miss those day where wrestling was fun and not boring compared to the garbage that WWE does these days Heyman and both were somewhat successful and both companies have a legacy in wrestling Hopefully some day a Best Of SMW dvd will be made available . Would add it to my collection for sure . Rf Video does have a few but want the best matches for the collection . 1 can hope .
@Aaron Lassiter Don;t blame me that your little pea brain couldn't comprehend what was written down in my comment . Maybe some children's books are more your speed . Obviously there some people liked what i had to say . Guess you were in the minority . .Sorry bout your damn luck .
Yeah that actually looks closer to Heyman from late 80's AWA to maybe very early 90's. For the younger fans who never saw Heyman back when he was known as Paul E. Dangerously in AWA, he looked MUCJ different. Very young and about 175 lbs lighter. Still a great talker back then, guy really stood out amongst the other mouth pieces of the day. You genuinely got annoyed by his voice and face.
I feel if smoky mountain stayed open until the boom it would have been like two different head to heads. WWF VS WCW and ECW VS Smoky Mountain Wrestling.
Haha not a shot, nobody would have given too shits about SMW outside of Tennessee and/or maybe Kentucky. Smokey Mountain sounds more like a beef jerky company than a wrestling company
@@timmylong833 You could be right there but knowing the drive Jim has to make things work and if they were able sustain themselves financially as a promotion I feel he would have made it work and expand the brand even more there where is was in where the promotion was based. Would love to see him try something out again like a new promotion in the future you know but its all money
I loved my young PWI Days...lol I remember it was WWF WCW...Then the other 2 I wanted to see and hear about...ECW and Smokey Mountin...then USWA maybe.....Anyways as a 12 year old at that time the only anywhere a young fan would hear about other promotions..i always liked seeing how things were...OTHER THEN WWF WHICH OF COURSE WAS EVERYWHERE
I remember Eric Bischoff saying he wanted house shows gone. So I don't think is was just suspended at wcw, but was cut due to it being a waste of money and time. Just like he didn't want Thunder. He has said if WCW didn't have Thunder forced on it the don't lose money.
When I think of Paul E all I can think about is him busting a blood vessel screaming BROOOOOOCK LESSSSSSSNAR, Mr. Cornette growing up wondering if you were gonna die every week was some of my best memories as a kid. Watching The Midnight Express no matter the opponet was in my opinion what made wrestling better all around because we knew you were on the card
ECW didn't go out of business because of lack of attendance. They were starting to draw shows that did 5,000+ and the ECW Arena was still turning away about 500-1,000 fans. Heyman's business and accounting practices along with not being able to keep up with the WWE and WCW raiding his talent caused ECW to go broke. I think Jim is still a brilliant wrestling mind, but SMW and ECW were different situations.
@lanny TY So many of those shows were paid for by the local promoter, meaning that the promoter basically paid the money upfront to take care of all of the expenses and to give Paul a profit regardless of how many showed up. Paul was also paying very few guys more than $100K. And quite frankly, he may have owed those particularly guys the money but he wasn't paying it. The bigger expenses for Paul was TV. He had to pay $5K per month to The Sunshine Network and another $5K per month to MSG. Then when Tod Gordon left he paid another $5K a month to SportsChannel Philadelphia. The ECW Arena shows were profitable, but they were turning away easily 500+ fans per show and they couldn't go to a bigger building because of the unions and the Athletic Commission would have them running at a loss even though they were selling out bigger buildings (this is what happened to Joel Goodhart). The same goes for the Elks Lodge which was less profitable than the ECW Arena. And ECW's merchandise sold far greater than SMW's. ECW's problems stemmed from Paul's issues with wasting money (for instance, he had to move the ECW office from Philly to Manhattan and basically increased its rent by 3x when he could have just done it from home) and being in the Northeast it's quite expensive to run a wrestling business. They basically needed bigger financial backing and somebody that could oversee the money like Tod Gordon did. Once Tod was gone the business was going to implode.
Also Paul losing his tnn deal and not getting a new one was the final nail in the coffin. Also ecw did really in hindsight need an accounting and business manager
Interesting you mention sports channel Philly. It became Comcast SportsNet around 96/97. I had Service Electric as a kid growing up in PA and the only times I caught ECW was late night in the random upper channels. It was a set time ever week, late at night I remember because I had to keep the volume low while everyone was sleeping. I just dont recall watching it on sportschannel/ comcast
What did Paul Heyman do with all that missing money? ECW always had a big crowd. Something got really screwed up there. Even Billy Corgan put money into it at the end.
@@makaveli4205 It was a complete shit-show. He would dip into the till to pay off people he owed money. He owed money to everybody. Talent, cameramen, security, lighting companies, etc. Tod was great at organizing the books to keep the finances in check. Heyman was exact opposite.
Jim was doing odd things that cost him money, like paying the wrestler for there work.
Corny actually said this with regards to ROH, in the lines of "the owner is very kind and generous, and look what happened to them" lol
As an ex wrestler....i agree!!!! Shame on jim for respecting the boys and paying them! Lol!
Bad businessman in that respect 😂
I know, what a shmuk
@@phildodson6141 you're a jobber
I love the longer videos when it comes to certain topics of wrestling.
Me too, these are great
Me too
Same
@@joetramonteful .
Jim's 45 minute evisceration of Vince Russo is the best
Corny invading ECW almost started a riot.
Corny invading AEW will result to crying fans being triggered and lots of tweets.
If I'm at a AEW show and see Jim I would throw trash and make sure a riot happens.
I would start watching AEW again if Jim Cornette showed up.
No, it would actually give the AEW army something credible to actually have against Corny. You'd see Tweet after tweet of "Hey, didn't you hate AEW Cornette"? Go back on your word, did ya?" and stuff like that.
@@1776Sledge I'd still watch it!
@@Patrick-ud3vu truth be told, so would I
Corny and Paul E are so similar. That’s why they don’t get on but respect each other. Corny always puts him over and Paul E has never buried Corny
Yea he never hated Paul Heyman, Jim Cornette says Heyman was the best at getting wrestlers strengths and hiding the weaknesses only thing Cornette had with Heyman was he was horrible with money
Theyre literal complete opposites. Dafuck are you babbling about?
@@Kas58223 IDK, if you listen to the older Cornette podcasts before Brian Last was involved Jim was harsh on Paul. His stance softened a lot over time, same with his take on Bischoff... but that had a lot more ground to make up.
@@thomasanthony5306 Both wrestling promoters, both managers, both known for their mic work, both highly opinionated about wrestling and booking. A lot in common for "complete opposites".
@@bubbafug00gle51 I tend to go to that Ole Anderson quote - "Cornette I used to think you were a dumb fuck, then so many other dumb fucks came along you went down the list" - that probably explains Cornys relationship with Heyman, WAY more people came along he hated more....
Love hearing Corny talk about the old days. I like it better than his reviews of the modern stuff.
Facts, stuff like this is always better.
Lol. I feel the exact opposite. I like the old school talk but I LOVE him taking the piss out of new school shit.
Agreed love hearing him discuss the territories and the ins and outs of them along with discussing what wrestlers were like and who not to rib
@@jeffreyriley8742 Not knocking you personally, but I don't get this outlook. Anyone can piss and moan about how "back in my day..." and "these kids today...". But very few people have the combination of experience, insight and hindsight that Cornette does. For me, his unique perspective is the only thing that separates him from any other asshole who wants to spout off.
@@bubbafug00gle51 Jim is entertaining doing either but I love his rants the most.
Basically Cornette wanted to be the Wisconsin Dells... Heyman wanted to be Disney... they both ended up being Santa's Village. Credit them both with having the balls to try
Great analogy
marvelous
609 Bischoff was a gigolo who used Turner's money to build the equivalent of Edelweiss Gardens on steroids.
@Charming Billy I love regional humor! Make people work hard to discover my jokes aint funny
That’s great and all but he ended being One Flag Little America over in Marshal , he didn’t have the Zippin Pippin
I sure do miss SMW....Being in my late teens early 20s at the time I loved it sooo much...Dirty White Boy was my favorite wrestler in that promotion.....Looking back on it now, if I were rich (now knowing Cornette ran it) I'd have asked him if he'd let me invest in SMW to help keep it going to this day if possible....Jim with SMW gave me all the feels of JCP/NWA....good quality matches....old school basic storyline grudges, simple concepts, no stupid, dumb unnecessary BS like today, budget friendly for me since I am disabled.....Thank you Jim...I have many cherished memories between Lenoir, NC and West Jefferson, NC with SMW...I will never forget them...
did you ever see Dirty White Boy during his earlier years, say, in Memphis (ca. 1984)?
One wanted to shock the system and buck the establishment, the other wanted to take things back to a regional, no nonsense anti cartoon wrestling feel. Ultimately both wanted a product vastly different than either the WWF or WCW. Neither one will go down as "good business men" but both have awesome minds and have made huge impacts in the industry.
If Jim left things with no debts, and no one owed, he’s a damned good businessman.
@@thepunditspundit1776 Moral businessman maybe
Timing is huge in life, especially in business. Had Jim opened the Smokey Mountain Wrestling territory in 1996 instead of 1992, then Jim would've been able to cash in on the late 90's wrestling boom. Unfortunately, when Jim started Smokey Mountain, the wrestling business in general was in a huge down period after it reached such tremendous heights during the 1980s.
I think that things would've been very interesting had Jim still been in business during the WWF's Attitude Era. Business would have been good, cause the crowds would've been huge! Jim's southern territory would've been a great alternative to WCW's mostly southern territory (yes, I know that WCW was national, but they were based in the south). So when things got really bad for WCW in the late 90's and then with WCW closing in the new millennium, Jim would've been in the perfect place at the perfect time to, for lack of a better word, "replace" WCW (in the south anyway).
So I can't really say that Jim was a terrible businessman, cause if he did everything exactly the same, but instead of starting in 1992, he started in 1996, then his territory would've been very successful. Who knows, he might even still be in business today?
@@jamesteegardner2273 very well stated, Sir.
@@jamesteegardner2273nah, Jim would have lost his shit when he had to deal with the first wave od trampoline cowboys
I grew up with one of the greatest wrestlers in the business. He made me promise to never bring up his name in social media so I don't. Jim, I asked him about you once and he spoke so very highly with you. He said you would pay "the talent" before you even bought a sandwich for yourself. From there on out I have been a big fan of yours. Send your best wishes my way as I am in a Texas Death Match with a type of cancer called Multiple Myeloma. Doing pretty good and we are learning a lot from my case. Never mind that. Just know that real people in the know call you a fine man. I enjoy your style and what you do. Respects to you, Sir. The first N.W.A. champion I remember was Dory Funk, Jr. so that makes me pretty damned old !!!!!! Bless sir for all of your entertainment.
My Prayers to You Sir in Your Life and Death battle with the Dreaded C Word. May you make that S.O.B. Tap out!! 🙏🙏
Hope you're winning your battle! Best of luck to you.
Lay the smackdown on cancer's candy-ass, my friend. 💪
I also have Multiple Myeloma. Started 10 years ago this month, 28 years old to now 38. Hope you are doing well a year later. I'm also a good patient from a teaching/research capacity. Had about a dozen different chemo regiments and an autologous stem cell transplant (none of it worked long time, transplant had me feeling like a zombie in molasses ). Thankfully I've been in remission for about 3.5 years after my CarT Therapy.
💪💪
Cancer is not goin over
I’d love to read a book about Smokey Mountain Wrestling.
He told The Sinister Minister, James Mitchell he was writing a book I dont know if it came out. the question he asked him was how did he fired him and then started talking about losing his day job and went on a drunk dial. Paul Heyman called him and asked if it was true that Smoky Mountain was going out of business. It caused Jim to call him all pissed and let him know that Wade Keller of the Wrestling Torch cost him a deal with a TV station in Virginia because the station's manager son had seen the publication.
Why? It was a rag tag rinky dink promotion that barely ran a half decade. As much as this dude rags on the Young Bucks they've made so much more money and sold so many more tickets even before Tony Khan (All In) even in a supposedly dead period in the industry.
@@duckmercy11 maybe so but I like reading about the history of wrestling. I don’t agree with everything that he has to say about AEW or the people who work there though.
@@duckmercy11 well that's certainly one way for you to have the point go right through your head and out the back without getting it. Fucking Milli Vinilli sold a lot of tickets.
@@traverschandler952 yeah, a lot of really shitty things sold a lot of tickets.
“No one got thrown out a window...”
Although he dreams of the day he could throw Tim Horner out a window
@Steve A You know something...we really need an animated version of Cornette’s stories, cursing and all
Dan Spivey?
Or Pam Lawson, Wade Keller, Bruce Mitchell, Mark Madden, KC O'Connor, (although his car got it, lol).
What about shitstain himself? Vince Russo?
The main difference between the two wrestling geniuses is simple. Jim genuinely cared for the people who worked for him and gave up his dream of having a promotion to take care of them. Paul E SOLD HIS TALENT OUT, and cast them into debt, running to WWE for himself only. (After having his talent ran through sharp furniture factories weekly for years) Corny has a heart.. Rare to see in any business, let alone wrestling.
Heyman is a genius, Cornette isn't. Look at where they are both at right now.
@@BedlamInThePentagram cornette like a smart guy but not quite on heymans level? I could buy that
@Western. 0/10 Troll: One is rich and working, the other is rich and retired.
@@BedlamInThePentagramYeah, geniuses bankrupt their own fucking promotion, and write needlessly controversial cucking storylines that bury everyone involved in it..
Hearing jim talking about real wrestling is beautiful, his enthusiasm for a lost art is infectious
"Real wrestling". 😂🤣
@@zamiel3 It's still real to him damnit!
@@zamiel3 Back when it actually had psychology and not a billion flip flops flips . Yep when Wrestling felt real
@@chadk890 it wasnt real at all for George Tragos , a REAL Wrestler-martial artist who predicted catch wrestling (THE REAL ART) would be replaced by fat f cks failed football players doing fake slow boring barfights (looking at ric flair vs dusty rhodes (RIP, but still, it has to be said.))
I’m getting the popcorn for this! 🍿
Same
Yep!
Jim cornette invading ECW in 1997 was awesome
Invading via invitation (and lots of begging) lol
I never expected seeing Jim Cornette and Jerry the King Lawler a god damn riot nearly happened that was on Dudley Boyz nuclear level heat
Jerry Lawler was so hated in ECW.. If he came there and did business against Shane Douglas that would have sold tickets and put money in everybody's pockets..
@@Kas58223 nowadays if Lawler and Corny invaded AEW, there will be lots of angry tweets lol
Jerry hit Dreamer in the nuts with the Kendal stick and he no sold Jim's racket.
The thing is that ECW had more visible markers of apparent success (national TV, PPV, running bigger venues, playing in major urban markets etc.) in the eyes of the average fan before it went under. That colors many people's perception of the relative success of the two promotions. Cornette wasn't trying to do those things, but it makes SMW look less impressive on paper.
Too bad ECW was always a house of cards. A crack house of cards, to be precise.
@@henrygvidonas9573 To be clear, I'm not saying it wasn't.
It took ECW until late 1997 to have a crowd number that equalled most of SMW's biggest crowds.
Sure but that doesn't change my point.
Can we finally, FINALLY get a Smoky Mountain Wrestling book Jim! Please!
Dark Side of the Ring.
Everytime A New Episode Runs - I Watch It 9 Times On Repeat Through The Night - New Season - May 6th on Vice - We Love You Jim !! 🔥🔥🔥
ECW is what happens when you put the motto "Live every day like it's your last" into action.
If Tuesday is the last day ever, then we can post date the checks till Friday!
Jim Cornette needs to talk about New Jack Vs The Undertaker!..lmao.. I'm still trying to find that footage.
Couple of clips here
th-cam.com/video/BZDh3Wo4_H8/w-d-xo.html
I Wish we could have seen New Jack vs Lesnar- Unsanctioned Match.
@@gold2040 LOL.. Thanks alot for that clip!..I thought New Jack and The Undertaker of all people in the same ring was a MYTH! Just total opposite's of each other character wise.
@@gold2040 What a gem! Thank you for that, good sir.
Also new jack promo before their match
th-cam.com/video/IDH5oIy5mvs/w-d-xo.html
To be fair to Paul, Smokey Mountain never had video game licensing, national TV distribution, national and international toy distribution, home video licensing, PPV, etc... Smokey Mountain also didn't have WWF and WCW sniping their talent constantly during a massive wrestling boom, so Corny didn't need to pay people astronomical amounts of money. Jim also never had a PPV company just up and decide not to pay him for a full six months of PPVs, which was one of two catalysts for ECW going bankrupt. On Demand owed ECW millions at the time they filed bankruptcy, and were able to resolve that debt for pennies on the dollar.
The point is people were not being fair about SMW.
Indeed. National television distribution with no advertising revenue and no attempt to manifest it. National television distribution they paid for and never received any revenue from. 3 am Wednesday morning airings on the Sunshine network didn't exactly have Taz and Dreamer laughing to the bank. To be fair to Corny To also be fair to Corny, the intent, the business plan, never involved any of those things mentioned above. SMW at its inception was designed for what it was. The re-establishment of regional territory wrestling.
“Smoking the Hopeium” ah glad to see Jimmy take a shine to an actual modern turn of phrase and not one he’s been quoting since the 80s lol
Thats an old one
That was a quote of former ROH office guy Joe Koff.
How my friends and I felt seeing all the ECW guys going to WWF and WCW must have been the same way that people felt in the early 80s when Vince was poaching from everywhere: You were happy to see your favorites doing much better for themselves, but it left a void in your home territory.
Why? That’s when wrestling was still cool! It didn’t suck til years later! Honestly the 80s was all wwf all those territories was trash. Nwa was the only one to keep up n the awa was good but on its way out. I loved seeing all the new n under used talent go to wwf n become stars.
@@djitman1856 Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit is it?
Also ecw guys got neutered and watered down. Vince for one didn't really heavily push talent that he didn't make. He's always been that way.
There were at least 5 territories better than the WWF
I never blamed the ECW guys for leaving. Paul paid shit money and WCW was an ATM machine. Kudos to those who made bank.
According to the same logic, TNA might be the most successful modern promotion because it is still going.
Technical yeah
I'm surprised that TNA/Impact has lasted as long as it had despite Russo, Dixie Carter, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff etc trying to tank it, they keep producing the product they have and I guess you can say that it's all due to Jeff Jarrett.
ROH is still going .
@charlesforbes933 ROH is still going to job to Aew talent in pointless matches....
ECW went out of business while selling out all their merch and selling out their shows. They grew too big too fast (almost out of necessity) and Heyman had to pay far more money to retain talent because WCW and WWE were trying to steal them. It was too small to be big and too big to be small. SMW didn't lose as much money but they also never seemed like anything more than a local regional territory. Nothing special and there are local shows out the national guard armory which you never heard of who lost less than Cornette.
Heyman was running a borderline ponzi scheme. Eventually he was going to run out of money to pay all the people people he promised to pay.
@@jessepaiz6356 the shit he did with Chris Candido bugs me. I can see not paying guys because you don't have the money but having them put stuff on their credit card for your business is really a scumbag thing to do. Seems like Heyman really needed someone like Todd Gordon to reign him in. They said when he left is when the financial issues started.
SMW would of just been a feeder promotion and then probably OVW concept.
It was a okay promotion with lots of future super stars
@@bluntamainia444 basically. SMW was just a territory, but JC has such an eye for talent, other companies were bound to snatch up his guys.
@Skippy Skipperson honestly I respect Cornette's wrestling knowledge and I saw an interview he did about his time in ROH and I think he would be a valuable member on any roster just for his sheer depth of experience in so many different roles. I never was a SMW fan. I caught it on a local channel that showed a different indie every night of the week, however it felt like another standard indie to me with cheap production values. ECW on the other hand felt like a real alternative and a far fresher alternative (of course I was 15 in PA so I wasn't there audience). ECW made waves, SMW never seemed to. ECW was Nirvana to SMW's tribute 80s hairband in the 90s.
I honestly was just trying to make a point about how you can't always judge success by how much money you lost. WCW lost more than ECW, ECW lost more than SMW and SMW lost more than a local indie. ECW was in a weird place. He made a huge mark on the industry and people were stealing his talent almost as quick as they could and he had to adapt probably much more than he would have liked. I honestly don't want to crap on Cornette just trying to make a point.
Some people seem to confuse business acumen with booking and promotional knowledge just to discredit Cornette and Heyman. It was always common knowledge that Paul was playing three card-monty running ECW's finances and Cornette admitted here he was never a captain of industry. Heyman and Cornette always had good minds for the business and are probably the last of the guys who learned from a lot of the people who were successful during the territory days and managed to run promotions that at least garnered a lot of attention during their run and are still talked about and debated over twenty years later. Even if you want to play devil's advocate and say the failure of their companies diminishes their credibility to critic wrestling now, that would put almost anyone else who used to book wrestling and does not anymore in the same boat. And if people really want to get technical about it Vince McMahon is probably no different from Cornette or Heyman in that he bought into an established promotion and leveraged it to be a success with the help of Linda who is known to be the financial brains behind that operation.
It's often been said that Vince McMahon is one of the worse bookers in the world but undoubtedly the best promoter.
WWE was only really good when Vince surrounded himself with people like Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco who would figure out the details of the bookings and matches, as those types of guys either passed away or retired or left to do other things the quality of the shows slowly started to get worse.
But Vince is capable of promoting the hell out of anything no matter how shit it is, and knows how to maximize money from every opportunity.
It's amazing Jim & Hayman never really joined forces... I know opposite worlds but with Jims heart and knowledge, and Paul's insane gift for bullshit talk and one step ahead style of booking and getting the best out of guys I think these two would make some noise in the business in terms of truly competing with Vince in the early 90s. Food for thought.
I’d love to see what Cornette could do with his own company, if he had the budget of AEW or WWE
He wouldn't be doing this podcast because he'd be running a successful promotion.
He'd only be a Podcaster only if he wanted to do it
I can't wait for "The Fall of Smokey Mountain" documentary to come out. 🔥🔥🔥🔥💪
Michal Action - I can't wait for "The Fall of Smokey Mountain" documentary to come out....
Smokey Mountain didn't exactly fall... it just kind of sat down and didn't bother getting back up.
@@bubbafug00gle51 😆👍
And because you said that que the DVD in 1-2 years.
@@bubbafug00gle51 it seems the "fall of SMW" would be a working title in reality.😂 Maybe a title like "The Way You Like It: The Story of Smokey Mountain Wrestling" would be a good one for an SMW documentary.
Either way, it'd be a really good documentary.
@@bubbafug00gle51 it's more of a "Why it didn't last long" than " The Fall" tbh
Wait a minute...
Rick Rubin. As in Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Slayer, Def Jam/American, now big-shot engineer for Johnny Cash, Metallica etc... He was SMW's main backer?? 🤯
That is correct.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling was the best!
In an alternate universe there’s a promotional war between the two and New Jack somehow becomes the peace maker by stabbing Ian Rotten
At the end of the day although I've been watching Cornette since early 1990 in WCW (Right before they left) and he had a good run in WWE & created Smokey Mountain. His legacy to me is running OVW & giving us Cena, Batista, & Brock!
Wow! Never knew that Def Jam Recordings founder, Rick Rubin funded Smokey Mountain Wrestling. You learn something new everyday
he was the guy who insisted that Jim bring a mummy into the ring, since Rubin was a fan of horror movies.
I never knew that Rick Rubin was part owner of SMW!!!
@@connor7036 typo. My fault
I think we ( I hope) can agree that ECW and Smokey Mountain is light years better than both AEW and WWE.
Pretty cool he remembers coming to little towns in my area, like Haysi and Council
I love listening too Jim, Hes just a wealth of knowledge
Great topic, but how weird are the parallels between Heyman and Corny? From their characters as managers, to the Midnights stuff, to ECW/SMW, and I just realized their birthdays are less than a week apart. I’ve seen Paul described as the bizarro world Cornette, but it’s funny when you actually dig in and examine it.
Bruce prichard's podcast episode about Cornette draws even more parallels between the two guys. It is really wild!
They are definitely Multiverse versions of the same guy. They both even started as photographers.
I’m pretty sure Jim Ross summed it up best.
Jim cornette is the southern Paul heyman
Paul heyman is the New Yorker Jim cornette.
Neither one will ever be willing to admit it though.
PAUL HEYMAN IS SIMPLY THE CITY VERSION OF CORNY,
AND CORNY IS THE SOUTHERN VERSION OF PAUL HEYMAN
edit: didn't mean all caps but too lazy to retype..
Seeing as how they are roughly the same age and broke in the exact same way, I'd say it isn't weird at all.
I would love to see Heyman and Cornette battle it out on the mic. Two of the best talkers on the stick.
These interviews are great. I was never a big wrestling fan but hearing the business side of it is very interesting.
I’m from Morristown and saw SMW in the high school gym. Wish I’d bought a SMW logo t shirt though. Anybody know if Jim will ever sell them again?
Doubt it. Vince likely owns the likeness.
As an entrepreneur and business owner, I appreciate learning the depth of the business. Wrestling is missing a Million Dollar Man. A Rick Flair.
I respect both approaches to some extent. I admire Heyman’s ambition to try and run a huge competitor to the WWF and WCW. I wouldn’t take that sort of risk running a business so I can respect that. However, in order to do it, he seems to have ripped a lot of people off who were working for him. Cornette stayed small and paid basically all his debts, only him and Rick Rubin ended up losing money. Didn’t seem like he took the big risks that might have made the business more successful though.
SMW was run more responsibly, but ECW ended up having the most cultural impact. That's life, sometimes.
Ain’t it, the dudes that do stuff right don’t usually get recognition
ECW was better in every way possible, that's why.
@@TRIIGGAVELLI at what having talentless people hit each other with objects?
@@fucker661 ECW had no talent? 😂 SIap yourself.
It's not really a fair comparison though SMW went out of business before wrestling had its mini-boom period ECW didn't really become popular until the Monday Night Wars brought more attention to the business as a whole and had a positive impact on the growth of all wrestling promotions. Cornette has mentioned before if only he'd had a crystal ball he'd have been able to stay open 18 months longer and would have been able to capitalize.
The issue with the ECW tape library and RF video was that Heyman had basically made a deal with RF where he could sell everything ECW ever had on video and there was no time clause in it. The Commercial tapes, the TV shows, the PPVs, the fancam releases EVERYTHING. There was absolutely nothing Vince could do about it once they realised the deal existed, which was after the WWE bought it, although I could be wrong on that. Which is why RF can still sell them to this day. Although, they are completely unedited, so you're much better off going there than viewing the butchered Network versions.
There are some limitations on RF Video's deal with ECW.
- RF didn't have access to ECW's professional master tapes, so in terms of professionally shot ECW content, RF is limited to whatever made it to TV. If ECW taped something with their cameras but didn't air it, WWE has that footage but RF does not. The exception is Holiday Hell 2000, the last card at ECW Arena. ECW's production crew made a copy of the event at the time for Tommy Dreamer. In 2013, Dreamer gave his copy to RF, who now sells it.
- The TV episodes, PPVs, and home video releases RF sells today are clearly sourced from VHS recordings he made at the time. They have tracking lines, buzzing, etc. With the ECW PPV events, he just ordered the shows, put a blank tape in the VCR, and hit record.
@@chrishh5777 😂😂😂
RF Video produced those tapes. They don't just sell the TV versions.
Stop talking about things you know nothing about.
@@Rjensen2 I have ordered plenty of ECW from RF Video. The sound/video quality is awful compared to when the exact same content is shown by WWE because WWE has ECW's master tapes while RF sells ECW stuff that he taped with his VCR back when they originally aired.
@chrishh5777 lmao, you definitely did not, then. RF Video carried their commercial tapes and produced them since the early 99s.
@@Rjensen2 I have every ECW Home Video release on DVD from RF Video. They are clearly VHS-to-VHS-to-DVD copies based on the degraded quality. The picture and sound is much better on WWE Network because WWE has ECW's master tapes.
Really wish i could have broken in back then. 80s Memphis is my favorite style. Shame we cant get back to the good ole days.
Love these deep dives into the business side of things. Very interesting
"Sure knew a lot of women with $50,000."
"Here comes Bially..."
Found this
"2 Bankruptcy
At the time of their closing, ECW owed more than $500,000 to at least 40 performers. The promotion's total debt was roughly $7.5 million, with nearly $4 million of that debt being owed to the Heyman family"
Paul Heyman's father, Richard Heyman, was the main outside investor who kept ECW afloat.
Paul Heyman Ran a Wrestling Federation and still lived at home with His Mom & Dad!!!! He cut promos in his Basement and His Mom was doing Laundry in the background!!!!
@@louiscsanko3673 So what?
I wish there was a way to watch all the old SMW and OVW shows.
alot of smw is available on TH-cam
Both promotions have episodes on TH-cam.
Gladiator TV has OVW show's that's on Amazon you need a fire TV to get it.
Sam Muchnick of St. Louis never went out of business, he retired, sold his interests, and then the new management ran wrestling's #1 city for decades right into the ground within 18 months. It ended up being the easiest of Vince McMahon's early takeovers.
the biggest difference between ECW and Smoky Mountain is before the bankruptcy ECW was profitable for a couple years Smoky Mountain never made any money
Jim Cornete I Enjoy Your Integrity Each And Every Time 😊🌤!!!
As much as Cornette talks about politics, for a lil while, he was a fiscal conservative.
GOTCHA PAUL !!!!
I'm a liberal and sometimes I catch my self being a little conservative.. Because you on the left of things doesn't mean you agree with everything left wing.. Jim and I feel more at home on the left and that's okay.. If anybody feel more at home on the right then that's okay too.. Don't let nobody change you and you shouldn't try to change anybody either.. Simple as that..
Not spending money you don't have is just common sense.
Not everyone is completely party line on everything. I'm a pro gun liberal, and the failed insurrection proved me completely correct with that.
maxx dahl : what "insurrection"? A few trespassers entering the Capitol after being let in by the police to take selfies? They even stayed within the velvet rope line inside the Capitol. Some "insurrection". Those guys were pikers compared to Susan Rosenberg, who actually set off a bomb inside the Capitol in 1981 and sat in jail before being pardoned by slick willie Clinton in 1996. Ms. Rosenberg currently sits on the board of the marxist group that calls itself b l a c k lives matter. A real insurrection would involve a group of miscreants actually taking over a section of a city and calling it an "autonomous zone" and preventing police & emergency vehicles from entering resulting in deaths. Oh, that did actually happen during the "summer of love" in Seattle, but the media described it as a " peaceful protest".
As good as SMW was , ECW was more over . It’s been 29 yrs and I never heard fans chanting “SMW” once.....
I never heard fans chanting WWF or WWE once either. Chants don't make money. Putting asses on seats makes money.
@@robfinlay8058 wwe ios still relevant .It is still a pop culture icon maybe the ratings are not very good but still
I've heard that the wrestlers at Lucha Underground were getting paid poorly or not at all. I think that's a big part of their demise.
Yeah. And also I really believe that Lucha Underground was trying to be a hybrid version of ECW, but everyone knows that when something gets hot shotted too much, the bottom falls off. The first 3 seasons of Lucha Underground were good but season 4 was when Lucha Underground as a whole jumped the shark. Another thing, when you think of Lucha Libre, you think of wrestlers from Mexico, but the only true Mexican stars were Sexy Star, Pentagon Jr, Fenix, Vampiro, and Alberto El Patron. The other guys were just under masks, for example: Prince Puma was Ricochet, Killshot was Swerve Strickland, Matanza was Jeff Cobb and Mil Muertes was El Mesias. I know Lucha Underground was trying to be a new promotion but it didn't work.
@@Connor-ki8zv you know a lot about it. I didn't realize some of those wrestlers were a part of it. Really good roster. Pretty wild.
@@dylansargent5682 yeah but the only thing is that the violence escalated to the point where people turned away from it. The other thing I didn't like was the fans were called "believers" like seriously? Call them what they really are which is FANS.
I think they should of touched on the cost of running in Philly and North East and the cost of running in TN and the surrounding areas in the 90's
Two completely different business models. Paul wanted a national promotion, Jim wanted a regional promotion.
Lot of what if’s and so on but you don’t want to live with regrets. I think the key difference as discussed was Smokey was a territory run on a business model; ecw was fly by the seat of our pants let’s throw everything against the wall to get to the next level. Great talk.
No one wants to live with regret. But anyone who tells you they have no regret is lying.
Regret is a part of life.
1995-'96 ECW television was the greatest latenight television program EVER!
That was magical and innovative at the time, especially if you lived in the northeast seeing it on whacky networks that don’t exist anymore
@@bluntamainia444 Channel 48 on my old CRT that had an antenna and the two knobs for channels. Same channel used to play anime & shit & also had other wrestling territories' TVs on like USWA. It was great.
For me it was on the Spanish channel at like 1 am in the northeast. I'll be an og ecw fan till I croak. Went to a tv taping and house show when they went to tnn
I remember it was on a few channels, first was the “sports network” of Philadelphia and that later became the modern Comcast sports channel, then it went to Gtv48 which was owned by a music studio in Philadelphia and it would air music videos that MTV wouldn’t and it had old tv shows, sex hotline commercials and ECW on after 11, then the Mega Churches bought the station and its been a religious channel ever since...
There was an independent station in Ashland, KY that would have reached the Huntington market. I believe The Sheik ran for awhile on 61 during BTW's glory days.
If SMW existed today, it would have a nice life on FITE TV or something
TH-cam has a nice episode list of SMW TV.
If Impact, MLW and NWA can survive in the present then SMW would have no problem staying afloat maybe even been a successful financially
I'm sorry. I can appreciate SMW but if anyone thinks that ECW wasn't revolutionary for the business is kidding themselves. SMW wouldn't fly in the Northeast at all in the 90s. ECW was wayyyy bigger and better than SMW on its best day.
I like Ecw , revolutionary yes and no. The only reason it got over was because they hotshotted " doing shit, they're not suppose to do".
And ECW wouldn't fly in the south.
Buying everyone’s ticket with your personal credit card? How could that possibly end well?
8:15 Fun fact, that's literally a direct quote from Paul Heyman himself.
If only I had a time machine. I'd have won the lottery and given Jim all the money he needed. He never will but I'd love for him to start a promotion again and do wrestling his way.
Time machines and winning the lottery. Very "realistic" financial plan you have put together there.
@@KayFabe87 They never said it was realistic lol
@@KayFabe87 to be fair, once you have mastered time travel, winning the lottery is easy.
Bruce Pritchard: Paul is Jim from New York and, Jim is Paul from Kentucky.
Me: I Guess... but, Jim was here first.
Man, Rick Rueben was a great backer. Seems like he just wanted to see it work out for Jim and the boys, no greed, no micro managing, just happy if they could break even.
But unfortunately there were some instances of Jim having to pay guys out of his pocket on money that he was short on if you recall. Because Ruben was in California and his money wouldn't go far enough.
@@Connor-ki8zv Yeah but Rick Rubin was basically donating his money to Jim, he never expected to make a profit. When someone is funding you just to support old school wrestling you can't keep asking them for more. Though it does show that Smoky Mountain was such a unpromising business enterprise than Jim probably couldn't have gotten traditional financing from those who would have expected a return.
The trolls won't want to admit it, but this is what makes Cornette's podcast so good. Just like how he wishes they would have a separate show for women's wrestling so he wouldn't have to watch it, I wish he did a separate show for his modern wrestling criticisms. Because when he goes into story time mode, it's an excellent listen.
Exactly. I don't care about his aew stuff as I don't watch aew or any modern wrestling.
Yep agreed, I do watch the AEW stuff but the stories of the old days are easily the best thing.
Man a cross promotion between SMW and ECW would had been awesome.
We pretty much saw it. A lot of ECW's talent was SMW guys.
They were too different, SMW would have got eaten alive at the bingo hall
They both only had jobbers wdym?
Dae Dae Thomas yeah RVD Sabu Sandman Shane all complete nobodies hahahhhhahah
It would've been billed as old school that values traditional rules (SMW) vs new school with no rules (ECW).
After Jim mentioned Rob Feinstein, I genuinely thought he said “predators” rather than “creditors”.
Basically Jim was a "shitty business man", but it was his (and Rick's) money. He owns it which is cool and it was his money which is cool.
What a mess the ECW closing was. It’s weird because their final months in business, you couldn’t find an empty seat in the arena. Bubba Ray and Tommy Dreamer also mentioned a truck-full of merch pulling up, and said truck being empty at the end, with THOUSANDS of cash in hand
So glad I own the rights to all the Smokey mountain tapes
ECW was on national cable, regional sports networks, PPV and toured in a far broader area than SMW ever hoped to. I don't criticize Cornette for failing with SMW...I criticize him because he calls people out for doing stupid shit that mocks the business when he did more than his share of that stuff himself
Yes. Paul lost more money but he made more money, too.
No he didnt.
@@TheMagnificentMongoSlade How does going bankrupt equate to "making more money"?
Do you have a job or run a business? Nobody gives a fuck about money you _used_ to have.
@@henrygvidonas9573
Cornette was in debt, gave up. Decided the venture wasn't worth it anymore.
Heyman was in debt, filed for bankruptcy. You don't even need figures for this. Cornette could've filed for bankruptcy but chose to walk away. Heyman initially tried to save ECW by filing chapter 11 (reorganization), to give himself time to pay back his debts. Later, he refiled under chapter 7 and decided to just liquidate the assets.
Heyman made millions (though he also lost millions). If you listen to cornette's own account of SMW finances he never had the cash Heyman did. Never. SMW never made PPV, didn't have national TV and wasn't on in bigger markets either (whether by design or otherwise). So yes, Heyman made more money-- he also lost more money.
I'm from neon ky , a town in between hazard and pikeville . We used to love watching old smokey mountain wrestling.
I live in Barbourville, Ky. Always enjoyed SMW!!
To be fair, despite whatever negatives there were, Paul still brought ECW to heights that SMW never even came close to reaching lol.
SMW never had a home grown great wrestling talents. A lot of good decent mid Carders
Not only that, but I feel like a lot of people defending SMW here in the comments never actually watched an episode of it before. SMW would never last, people wanted change. SMW felt outdated back when it was running, imagine how it would have fared against WWF, WCW or ECW in the late 90s. At least Paul had the balls to innovate and go after the big companies. And let's be honest, without ECW there wouldn't have been an attitude era or even a ruthless aggression era. I respect Corny and his vision, but wrestling needed to change
Jim Cornette is a genius but he's no Tony Khan (april fools)
Yeah thank GOD he's not Tony Khan
That's what they should have done back in the Attitude Era once a month have one of your mega stars come over to Smoky Mountain sell out the shows and then switch guys and now you've got a whole new brand bringing in massive money with a low budget..
But you would need to bring them in for an entire month so the story could run its course.
They could have brought in huge money for a minor league wrestling program
A big name/s from the WWE going to Smoky Mountain for a few months once a year would have kept them fresh plus helped SMW out meaning Vince would have had a smaller promotion to send developmental talent to.
Same as with ECW
1of the most interesting historical topics on this show imo
If we are doing ECW vs Smoky Mountain...Lets be real ECW did way better than Smoky mountain. ECW was 3rd biggest promotion after WCW. Smoky Mountain wrestling was never competitive. It was just a small regional promotion. So if you want to be honest ECW was a far more successful venture than Smoky Mountain
Yeah ECW was bigger doesn't mean it was better. Having strippers, throwing guys off 20 foot high stages onto flaming tables, yeah that's going to get attention doesn't make it good.
I loved ECW back in the late 90's/early 2000's but when I go back and watch their stuff now it doesn't hold up whereas Smoky Mountain does pass the test of time in fact it's become even better for me.
I wonder if Verne could have done something similar to that to keep the AWA alive. And as much as some people gripe about I Cs (independent contractor) this is how the TV game works.
No, Vince was going to steal absolutely everything and did. Arenas, TV slots, Talent, office workers, etc.
Honestly imo part of the reason that ECW went bankrupt and to the point where people were owed money was the fact that Heyman tried to take a somewhat regional promotion in Eastern Championship Wrestling changing it to Extreme Championship Wrestling and trying to take it on a national level and when they signed with TNN (The Nashville Network )and at best they were pulling in a 0.8 rating lumped in between Rollerjam and Rock 'N Bowl and they were expected to do a 2.0 rating and Heyman was supposed to give them new programming from the start and the 1st show was a best of show w/ RVD Vs Jerry Lynn from Hardcore Heaven '99 and Taz Vs Rhino from a recent house show it was a bad start from the beginning plus Heyman was making deals for videotape/dvd distribution and action figures when he could barely pay his guys to begin with plus Fed Ex'ing his shows to the tv channels across the country which cost him a fortune and expanding his product into new areas . They did a show in Canada (Missaauga , Ontario ) which i was present for which was a tv taping and from what i have heard they had to use the money from the t-shirt sales to pay the guys . Basically Heyman was taking on more than he or his pocketbook could handle therefore owing millions of dollars to wrestlers and ppv companies witholding money and the situation with rights to the videotape library which i know that RF Video has rights to since they were the dub house and did fancam videos for the ECW house shows and WWE has rights to some of the video library as well . At least with Cornette and SMW it was a regional promotion and was meant to be that with Rick Rubin putting in some of his money not really expecting it back and aside from attempting to get tv in areas that he thought he could make money Cornette knew what his limitations were and never let it get to the point that it got to where he couldn't pay people without going into bankruptcy in doing it Have seen some of the SMW product and i think if given a chance it could have done somewhat good on national tv for fans that liked good ol' southern wrestling or just wrestling in general .ECW was perfect for the 90's with that combo of brutal no holds barred wrestling with that hardcore rock n roll edge that spit in the face of the watered down kid friendly WWF and the corporate WCW . Was afan of ECW and still am and have many vhs.dvds of theirs in my collection . Miss those day where wrestling was fun and not boring compared to the garbage that WWE does these days Heyman and both were somewhat successful and both companies have a legacy in wrestling Hopefully some day a Best Of SMW dvd will be made available . Would add it to my collection for sure . Rf Video does have a few but want the best matches for the collection . 1 can hope .
@Aaron Lassiter Don;t blame me that your little pea brain couldn't comprehend what was written down in my comment . Maybe some children's books are more your speed . Obviously there some people liked what i had to say . Guess you were in the minority . .Sorry bout your damn luck .
Would anyone else agree that Paul seems like a better manager on camera and Jim seems like a better manager behind the camera?
32:08 it’s confirmed. Corny said it himself, but I think Jim is trying to hint that he is getting Edge on the next show lol 🤣🤣
Jim Cornette is teaching history of wrestling.
Very kind of Travis to make paul look better than he ever actually did.
Yeah that actually looks closer to Heyman from late 80's AWA to maybe very early 90's. For the younger fans who never saw Heyman back when he was known as Paul E. Dangerously in AWA, he looked MUCJ different. Very young and about 175 lbs lighter.
Still a great talker back then, guy really stood out amongst the other mouth pieces of the day. You genuinely got annoyed by his voice and face.
interesting hear.. the co-host is great, he lets jim just talk and explain stuff and only talk when needed.
I love every time Jim talks about Asheville or Boone NC
I feel if smoky mountain stayed open until the boom it would have been like two different head to heads. WWF VS WCW and ECW VS Smoky Mountain Wrestling.
Haha not a shot, nobody would have given too shits about SMW outside of Tennessee and/or maybe Kentucky. Smokey Mountain sounds more like a beef jerky company than a wrestling company
@@timmylong833 You could be right there but knowing the drive Jim has to make things work and if they were able sustain themselves financially as a promotion I feel he would have made it work and expand the brand even more there where is was in where the promotion was based. Would love to see him try something out again like a new promotion in the future you know but its all money
Corny knows more about wrestling than most people know about themselves.
I loved my young PWI Days...lol I remember it was WWF WCW...Then the other 2 I wanted to see and hear about...ECW and Smokey Mountin...then USWA maybe.....Anyways as a 12 year old at that time the only anywhere a young fan would hear about other promotions..i always liked seeing how things were...OTHER THEN WWF WHICH OF COURSE WAS EVERYWHERE
The only thing we learned here is that they should join forces!
I just had a strange thought. What if ECW was nothing more than an operation designed to support Paul E's coke habit?
Take a shot every time Jim says "but anyway" you won't make it through a video🤣
I remember Eric Bischoff saying he wanted house shows gone. So I don't think is was just suspended at wcw, but was cut due to it being a waste of money and time. Just like he didn't want Thunder. He has said if WCW didn't have Thunder forced on it the don't lose money.
Corny is so honest he's calling himself out for shorting a payoff on a NO SHOW
When I think of Paul E all I can think about is him busting a blood vessel screaming BROOOOOOCK LESSSSSSSNAR, Mr. Cornette growing up wondering if you were gonna die every week was some of my best memories as a kid. Watching The Midnight Express no matter the opponet was in my opinion what made wrestling better all around because we knew you were on the card
ECW didn't go out of business because of lack of attendance. They were starting to draw shows that did 5,000+ and the ECW Arena was still turning away about 500-1,000 fans. Heyman's business and accounting practices along with not being able to keep up with the WWE and WCW raiding his talent caused ECW to go broke.
I think Jim is still a brilliant wrestling mind, but SMW and ECW were different situations.
@lanny TY So many of those shows were paid for by the local promoter, meaning that the promoter basically paid the money upfront to take care of all of the expenses and to give Paul a profit regardless of how many showed up.
Paul was also paying very few guys more than $100K. And quite frankly, he may have owed those particularly guys the money but he wasn't paying it.
The bigger expenses for Paul was TV. He had to pay $5K per month to The Sunshine Network and another $5K per month to MSG. Then when Tod Gordon left he paid another $5K a month to SportsChannel Philadelphia.
The ECW Arena shows were profitable, but they were turning away easily 500+ fans per show and they couldn't go to a bigger building because of the unions and the Athletic Commission would have them running at a loss even though they were selling out bigger buildings (this is what happened to Joel Goodhart). The same goes for the Elks Lodge which was less profitable than the ECW Arena.
And ECW's merchandise sold far greater than SMW's.
ECW's problems stemmed from Paul's issues with wasting money (for instance, he had to move the ECW office from Philly to Manhattan and basically increased its rent by 3x when he could have just done it from home) and being in the Northeast it's quite expensive to run a wrestling business. They basically needed bigger financial backing and somebody that could oversee the money like Tod Gordon did. Once Tod was gone the business was going to implode.
Also Paul losing his tnn deal and not getting a new one was the final nail in the coffin. Also ecw did really in hindsight need an accounting and business manager
Interesting you mention sports channel Philly. It became Comcast SportsNet around 96/97. I had Service Electric as a kid growing up in PA and the only times I caught ECW was late night in the random upper channels. It was a set time ever week, late at night I remember because I had to keep the volume low while everyone was sleeping. I just dont recall watching it on sportschannel/ comcast
What did Paul Heyman do with all that missing money? ECW always had a big crowd. Something got really screwed up there. Even Billy Corgan put money into it at the end.
@@makaveli4205 It was a complete shit-show. He would dip into the till to pay off people he owed money. He owed money to everybody. Talent, cameramen, security, lighting companies, etc.
Tod was great at organizing the books to keep the finances in check. Heyman was exact opposite.
ahhhh when Paul E is not yet Heyman the Walrus