Vince Russo Says Jim Cornette’s Hatred Of Him Is “Folklore”
Wrestling is littered with fallouts, rivalries, and straight-up hatred, and it’s the last category of those that would begin to sum up Jim Cornette’s apparent feelings towards former WWE and WCW writer Vince Russo.
Jim Cornette and Vince Russo have about as diametrically opposed views on the wrestling business as two people are likely to have with Cornette preferring the old-school, sports-oriented approach, and Russo eschewing that in favor of the wildest excesses of sports entertainment.
Over the years since they worked together, Jim Cornette has orally sliced and diced Vince Russo in every way he can on many different platforms with the former manager’s hatred of Russo becoming the stuff of wrestling legend.
Now speaking to Chris Van Vliet on the Insight podcast, Vince Russo has addressed Jim Cornette’s feelings about him and says he thinks it stems from being chosen over Cornette not once but twice in their careers:
“First of all, bro, let’s be honest here. Okay, I don’t have one ounce of ill will towards Jim Cornette, but I know why Jim Cornette dislikes me. I mean, really it’s twofold, bro. I told you early on about how people feel about New Yorkers. Jim Cornette hates New Yorkers, hates New York, hates New Yorkers, hates the entire east coast. Okay, so there’s that.
“I’m working with a guy from the south now who absolutely hates New Yorkers. Here I come with this thick heavy accent, I am who I am, so that’s number one.
“Number two, at the end of the day at WWE and TNA I was chosen over Jim Cornette twice. Okay now, if the shoe was on the other foot and Jim Cornette was chosen over me, I’m going to look in the mirror and I’m going to ask myself why Vince? Why did they go with Cornette and not you? I would have looked at myself, but in Jim Cornette’s mind that was my fault.
“Whatever it is I did to get Vince McMahon and Dixie Carter to choose me over him was underhanded, was you know, what whatever, because they couldn’t have been Jim’s flaws that he was very set in his ways and very difficult to work with. It couldn’t have been that, it had to be something Vince Russo did. So that’s where all this stems from and then of course, bro, he’s turned it into folklore, you know.
“I actually know Jim’s big on, you know, the old-time Cauliflower Alley Club and all that, right? I even said let’s go on online, pay-per-view, online. Let’s have a one-on-one debate. Let’s charge X amount of dollars. Every single penny goes to the Cauliflower Alley Club. I have no problem confronting you face-to-face. I don’t want a penny from this and you’ve got some old talent, old-time wrestlers really down on their luck that could probably use a few dollars.
“He outright refused. Why did he refuse bro? Because it will kill his gimmick, that’s why he refused. To me, whether it kills your gimmick or not if you love wrestling so much and you love those that built wrestling so much and you financially can raise money for these wrestlers. I would have done it in a heartbeat.”
Vince Russo then reiterated his belief that Cornette berating him for all these years is just part of his gimmick:
“Absolutely bro you don’t hear me say mean things about him at all. As a matter of fact, bro, I probably put Cornette over at least once a week, I put him over. Absolutely bro. It’s folklore. It’s, it’s, you know what he’s created with his, you know, cult. And God forbid he ever went back on that. Then in his mind his people would never look at him the same.”
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