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Former WWE Manager Jim Cornette Says Evolve Overreacted By Firing Joey Styles

Published on: November 19, 2016 at 12:16 AM
By Shawn Lealos

Former WWE and ECW announcer Joey Styles had a really bad week last weekend. He was working for Evolve Wrestling and was told before the show not to make any political jokes at the event. When Styles came out, he made a comment towards the ring announcer, riffing on the Donald Trump comment about grabbing “pu**y” but never actually said the word.

It didn’t matter. Joey Styles went backstage and realized that Evolve owner Gabe Sapolsky was furious with him. Depending on who you believe, either Gabe fired Joey Styles, or Joey told Gabe to fire him and then left without taking his pay. In his recent podcast, former WWE manager Jim Cornette said that Sapolsky overreacted and Joey Styles didn’t do anything worth getting fired over .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obgyiRW5q10

Sadly for Joey Styles, it wasn’t just Evolve that fired him. Chikara released a statement that said they were breaking off their relationship with him, and then Beyond Wrestling also said they were eliminating their working relationship with him as well. The Inquisitr previously reported that Joey Styles wanted to be the face of the indies , and that dream has died.

What happened at the Evolve event was that Joey Styles made the joke that the ring announcer was so beautiful that Donald Trump would want to grab her — and then he stopped. He turned and said, the word he left out was a perfect chance to introduce manager Stokely Hathaway.

It was clever and funny, but it wasn’t the word that Joey Styles almost said that got him in trouble. It was the fact that he was told not to make political jokes because Gabe wanted the Evolve show to be a chance for people to get away from the stress of the presidential election.

Joey Styles sent an open letter to PWInsider and said he was the one who told Gabe to fire him and then said that Jeremy Botter, the representative from FloSlam, was also not angry. FloSlam is who Evolve is working with now. Botter responded and said he was in fact very angry about the joke.

Jim Cornette went onto Twitter and said that it was ridiculous that Gabe fired Joey Styles. Cornette and Gabe are friends and Gabe responded that Cornette would have done the same thing. Jim Cornette denied that and said he would have done it if Joey Styles disrespected wrestling, but for a harmless joke, it would have been nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

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Jim Cornette said that people who were offended were just being silly. Jim Cornette then went off on Mike Quackenbush, the head of Chikara, who also fired Joey Styles. He said that Quackenbush actually had help seminars that said people should be allowed to express themselves. Cornette then went off and called Quackenbush self-important and then cut a hilarious promo slamming him for running a “clown show.”

Jim Cornette then touched on Joey Styles’ apology to Evolve and everyone else involved. He said that Styles manned up while Gabe went to Twitter and fired him publicly. Cornette then ripped into the FloSports guy that went to Twitter to further bury Joey Styles, and tore him apart in another rant because he couldn’t let the apology be the end of it.

Jim Cornette said that people were stupid for ripping on Joey Styles making a joke while electing Donald Trump for president, despite him being the one who actually said it to begin with. It was a case where Jim Cornette, who is normally aggressive, took the side of Joey Styles and just destroyed the wrestling promoters who he said overreacted.

[Featured Image via WWE ]

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