Jim Cornette recently clarified some comments he made on his “The Jim Cornette Experience” podcast regarding Shinsuke Nakamura. Cornette went on record as saying Nakamura would only succeed in WWE if Vince McMahon allowed it. Here are some additional highlights:
Cornette on Nakamura’s success being dependent on McMahon: “Nakamura’s going to be an instant star in NXT for as long as he’s there. His success on the main roster depends on the chairman, as [Jim Ross] says. How Vince McMahon sees him in pretty much, the long run, because of Vince’s overwhelming success with luchadors or guys from Europe. How long did it take even Steve Regal to get a chance to get over, William Regal? The guys from Japan.”
Cornette on how McMahon wanted some WWF midcards to beat luchadors for the syndicated Super Astros show: “Well, at one point, Vince also says, ‘well, while they’re here,’ apparently, he started penciling these guys that [Antonio] Peña would bring up to feature on the Super Astros show in on like Shotgun Saturday Night, I don’t know what, the B-show or whatever, something on Sunday Night Heat, and he was going to beat them with like an undercard WWF guy. And he didn’t understand even if there was no internet at that point and communication wasn’t instant, just for Pe?a to bring his champion up for this supposed business relationship and Vince to beat him on the B-show with an underneath guy, I told Vince, I said, ‘why don’t you just piss in his mouth while he’s down there?’ And he looked at me [and asked], ‘what do you mean, pal?’ I said, ‘this is the guy’s champion! If you want to do business with him, even if he is a f–king chump, you can’t just f–king knock him off.’ [McMahon replied], ‘oh, okay. I understand.’ He didn’t think that way. So anyway, the point was, if Vince allows Nakamura to be himself and do what got him over and hopefully allow people to ease that translation into another culture instead of having him do goddamn skits part of a f–king Saturday Night Live f–king Chinese delivery f–king sketch or whatever because he doesn’t understand how big or who the guy was in his culture, then, that could derail things, was basically the point of my statement.”
