Jim Cornette On ‘Beef’ With Kevin Owens: ‘He Did Everything I Told Him To Do’
Jim Cornette is a man of opinions, and with the career that he’s had, most wrestling fans are more than happy to listen to him.
But there is a subsection of Cornette haters out there apparently who love to poke fun at the wrestling personality when he’s wrong.
That phenomenon recently came back to haunt him in the form of Kevin Owens’ (aka Kevin Steen’s) success. Apparently, when Cornette was booking for Ring of Honor at the time of Owens’ star-making run, Jim was unconvinced that the brash young superstar would ever make it.
Seeing Kevin Owens turn up on Raw got the bear-pokers shoving their sticks in Cornette’s face on what he calls “the Twitter machine.” Here’s a brief excerpt from the Jim Cornette interview, which originally appeared on WLW Radio.
“Apparently Kevin Steen — Kevin Owens — did an angle with John Cena, whose the biggest wrestling star in the world, so this is a big deal when you do something like that on national television. As big a deal as anything in wrestling is these days. And everybody just tweeted the picture and said, ‘See? See? See?’
“I guess it bears repeating one more time what my whole gripe or point of conflict has been with Kevin Steen over the past few years since I worked with him in Ring of Honor. I didn’t say the guy couldn’t wrestle. We made him the Ring of Honor World Champion for a year for Christ’s sake. It was style instead of substance. We made him world champion and he cuts a great promo and he had great matches. Pretty good athlete underneath there somewhere to be carrying all that excess weight. The problem is, he goes too far and he didn’t want to listen to anybody. He didn’t want to do what you asked him to do without endless argument and insisting on going too far. Not wanting to get in better shape. Not wanting to clean up his look. Constantly debating about same. And wanting to super kick the five-foot tall girl ring announcer in the face for a high spot. Or crashing through four tables or generally doing his own thing regardless of what the people employing him wanted him to do. [I said] that would doom him to working in front of four or five hundred people in a rec center the rest of his life. And apparently I was wrong.”
Of course, anyone who’s listened to Jim Cornette before knows that he seldom thinks he’s wrong about anything. He goes on to point out that Kevin Owens did everything that he asked him to do in order to make it in the WWE, so the fact that people want to shove Owens’ success in his face just proves his point.
https://youtu.be/QYd9qxL7AJg
It would be interesting to get Kevin Owens’ take on this since arriving in WWE, but Jim Cornette is “wrestling past” and many believe Owens is “wrestling future,” and never the two shall meet.
What do you think, readers? Did Jim Cornette get it right on Kevin Owens, or is he trying to save face now that his former employee has hit the big time? Sound off in the comments section.
[Image via WWE]
