Jim Cornette Trashes Recent McIntyre-Kross Smackdown Segment
Jim Cornette wasn’t shy about sharing his displeasure for a recent Smackdown segment that didn’t help one of WWE’s top rivalries between Drew McIntyre and Karrion Kross.
Drew McIntyre and Karrion Kross will have a Strap Match at Extreme Rules on October 8th, but a recent segment they had on Smackdown did not go as planned.
On the September 23rd episode of Smackdown, Scarlett was supposed to throw a fireball into McIntyre’s face to knock him down so that Kross could put a sleeper on him. However, the fireball missed McIntyre’s face, so they had to improvise, which led to Scarlett hitting a low blow on McIntyre leading to Kross applying the Kross Jacket sleeper hold.
A report from Fightful Select noted that the flash paper used for the segment was brought in by the team traveling to SmackDown on WWE’s corporate jet and was not procured by the company’s prop team, with the flash paper said to be not ready for live TV. That led to McIntyre, Kross and Scarlett improvising the low blow spot to knock McIntyre down.
Legendary wrestling manager Jim Cornette addressed the botch fireball spot on his Experience podcast while sharing some of his own experiences using fire in wrestling.
“Drew McIntyre comes out to do a promo. And he’s talking about Karrion Kross and he challenges Karrion Kross to a strap match at Extreme Rules. So now they’re going to do a pay-per-view with a bunch of matches that have no rules when all of their goddamn regular matches pretty much have no rules.”
“But it was a good promo, Drew McIntyre looks good. He’s got the size etc, blah, blah blah. But again, as soon as he makes the challenge instantly the music plays here comes Scarlett to the ring. […] So when Scarlett comes to the ring, Karrion Kross imagine this, attacks Drew McIntyre from behind. How many times have we seen this just in the two programs on Friday? Somebody comes down the one way you’re looking at him somebody comes the other way.”
“[…] So there they get in a fight and McIntyre posts Karrion Kross and then puts the strap on Kross’ wrist and then gets the other end and starts whipping the bejesus out of Kross and Kross sold it big. And okay, we’ve got some interest in a strap match going on here, and as Kross is selling Scarlett rolls in and blocks his prone body like no, no stay away.”
“And Drew McIntyre is like why I oughta, should have… But he pauses and she’s fumbling with something. And she tries what the point of it was she was going to fire a fireball at Drew McIntyre’s face and I assume the plan was to hit him with it and burn him. But it went straight past him.”
“[…] So they’re trying to give this guy f*cking push, Karrion Kross, and he’s got the look. And he’s got the girl. And his work. I guess ain’t bad. We’ve seen a bit of him. They tried to give him a big push, but this was a goddamn clusterf*ck. And I know sometimes I’ve seen things happen especially with fire you know, whether the BIC lighter gets wet because you’re sweaty or the flash paper gets wet because you’re sweaty or, you know, the Iron Sheik in Evansville that night to Jimmy Hart. ‘Jimmy, it won’t strike, it won’t strike.’”
“But this was just no, it didn’t need to be this way. Had nobody in that building ever done this and know how it’s supposed to be done? Or did they just read about it on the internet?”