Shane Douglas Discusses Jim Cornette – Vince Russo Conflict, Wrestlers Buying Their Own Health Insurance, More
Episode #4 Of The Triple Threat Podcast featuring “The Franchise” Shane Douglas and Chad and John Poz of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling is NOW available and streaming on the IRW Network. In this except Shane Douglas gives his side of the Jim Cornette/ Vince Russo conflict, his feelings on both individuals as well as highlights from our “Ask Franchise Anything” segment.
On how far the Jim Cornette / Vince Russo conflict has gone:
“I have read it the same way as everybody else online obviously but if I didn’t know better and this was from the outside in and not knowing the business like I know the business, I’d say this is a work. Other than that I know these two and I know it couldn’t possibly be because if you say Vince Russo’s name around Cornette it is like the old Three Stooges bit and slowly I turn step by step and he is ready to dig your eyeballs out. Corny is an incredibly well versed on our buisness and he can tell you that on June 1, 1973 Jerry Lawler defeated Austin Idol at the Memphis Coliseum or it was 72 degrees outside and he beat him at 9:32PM. It is crazy the amount of stuff he knows about our business.”
“I love Jim to death and Jim can get himself pretty revved up and I always thought that I was the most up-tight person in the wrestling business and than I met Jim Cornette and realized there is somebody out there a little more tightly wound then I am. But these two have been going at each other for years and I understand Jim’s penchant for his feelings on Vince Russo and I’ve spoken to Vince Russo and a lot of the stuff that Vince had written in the past I didn’t personally agree with or like. The Viagra on a pole match? We can recall some of these moments but I know Vince Russo as a person also and I’ve always got a long very well with him personally. For me it just seems to be an outlandish idea with an order of protection and application to the court. It is something that is a bit over the top and I think in the professional wrestling business that I am guessing that is what Vince Russo thought it would be seen as. Something that was over the top and finger in the eye type of ha-ha and I could clearly see where Jim Cornette being served official documents could take it and run with it and it is not something I would do but I can’t speak for why Vince did it other than I do come down the side that it is a little bit and nothing more than in Vince’s mind I’m guessing was being seen as a rasslin’ angle as opposed to putting a legitimate protection of abuse order on Jim Cornette.”
Wrestlers still needing to buy their own health insurance:
“As of right now all things are as they were. Vince McMahon has always said that and patted himself on the back that he’s moved wrestling into the future and out of the smoke filled rooms as it was when I used to go as a kid. Now you can go and see doctors and teachers and steel workers at a wrestling show but the fact that professional wrestling with as much money as it has (not so much lately in America) but as much as it had at one point that it outdrew professional football and professional hockey ( the NFL and NHL combined). There is no reason in the world that the couple hundred wrestlers that were performing at the time for WCW, WWF and ECW that they should’t have been covered by some kind of protection and that is my personal opinion. For the young wrestlers that are coming into it, I’ve got a big news flash and this is nothing has changed. It is how it was the in 1980s when I came into the wrestling business and right now when you think you are young and invincible it is no big concern but what happens when after 30-35 years of electrifying crowds? You need to get a hip replacement and you can be like what Sabu did and go online and start a GOFUNDme page or you can not have surgery like Ivan Koloff or take one of the million routes that wrestlers have always taken. I say, shame on my industry that for all of the money made even now in it’s down position it still generates and wrestlers have to by and large look out for themselves, shame on the industry.”
Fans perception that wrestlers receive large royalties for merchandise and Sabu’s need to start a GoFundMe page:
“I talk to wrestling fans every weekend and every chance that I get at the grocery store, at shows and at conventions and every fan says the same thing and that is they believe when they buy a Franchise t-shirt that some portion of that money is going to me as in more so of ten, fifth teen or twenty cents but some significant portion is coming to the Franchise. When you buy something from WWE or through WCW in the past some tiny portion of that goes to the talent and the rest goes to the people that are running the company. To me that is just unforgivable and that Sabu has to start a GOFUNDme page to get surgery that is medically necessary for him after entertaining wrestling fans for so many years and making hundreds of millions of dollars for other people that he has to start a GOFUNDme page, shame on my industry is all I can say.”
