Jim Cornette Says Mick Foley’s Spot With Joey Ryan Helped Devalue Wrestling

Jim Cornette is a wrestling traditionalist with a very strong opinion about it. He will fight tooth and nail in what he believes in and there’s little that can be done to convince him otherwise. This actually rings true with everything about Corney from pro wrestling to politics.

When Mick Foley took Joey Ryan’s famous YouPorn Plex at an OTT Wrestling show in Dublin, Ireland a lot of people lost their minds. Opinions were shared and everybody wanted to weigh in on the subject.

But Jim Cornette saw the clip, and of course he was disgusted but he saw it as an even deeper sign of the de-evolution of pro wrestling as a whole. He recently opened up about it in very long form on The Jim Cornette Experience.

“I hate to report this to a lot of people who probably don’t know it and would be horrified to find it out first-hand sorta like bad news about a member of your family, you hear it on the radio. I hate to be the one to break it to people,” Cornette began in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

Cornette began talking about the controversial spot at that OTT Wrestling show we all know too well at this point and then brought up how the wrestling business has been devalued as a whole. He said every other entertainment profession has seemed to make much more (adjusted for inflation) than pro wrestlers did decades ago.

Cornette asked his co-host, The Great Brian Last: “In what professional sport, professional field of entertainment are the majority of participants are making less money adjusted for inflation than guys were 40 or 60 years ago.” Brian took a moment and said he couldn’t think of one. “Football’s gone up, rock and roll’s gone up, the f-cking professional volleyball tour’s gone up,” Jim Cornette replied.

“Wrestlers are now viewed as actors that are cast to play parts and perform choreographed g-ddamn routines mixed with male soap opera and action/adventure delivered in a f-cking amusing way to put smiles on people’s faces and per capita except for the ten or fifteen top guys in the biggest company in the world and maybe a few guys in Japan, almost every single one of them are making less money than their counterparts were adjusted for inflation even 30-years-ago or 40-years-ago or 60-years-ago,” Jim said. Ironically what the should-be WWE Hall Of Famer is forgetting is a few of those “guys in Japan” are The Elite and Jim has been rather outspoken about Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks in the past.

“Because it has become g-ddamn ridiculous choreographed display of hosesh-t instead of a competition of people wanting to pay to see. And you can’t have the two existing side-by-side because I’m sorry I’m not gonna believe in the sincerity of the emotions between the two guys fighting in the main event if in the third match some outlaw f-ck was flinging people across the ring with his d-ck or everybody was flying over the top rope for an invisible hand grenade.”

“And Joey Ryan, you’re in another category of the people who your f-cking fans who like to swing across your pendulous c-ck they think that I’m mentioning you to try to stay relevant but I’m mentioning you as a public service for all the people who used to like wrestling which are in greater numbers than the ones that currently do today who are disgusted by you and the people that do that sh-t that you do because they remember when that was viewed by even the fans as disrespectful and horsesh-t. But so many of ya have come along that now people are used to laughing at wrestling and having a smile put on their face by a bunch of f-cking people pulling their pants down and literally at this point now shaking their d-cks at people.”

“So I don’t do that once again to get attention, I do it to call attention to my opinion that you and people like you in the business,” Cornette added. Then the famous pro wrestling manager brought up how he read what Mick Foley had to say about the YouPorn Plex spot.

“Here’s what I have to say to Mick,” Cornette replied. “And I loved Cactus Jack and Mick Foley and Mankind and Dude Love for almost thirty years since I met him but here’s basically the reason why he said he did it — and of course he made kinda light of it like he does you know in his very witty writing way. And he is entertaining as all f-ck and I’ve always said that. But he said the reason why he did it was because ‘look at the picture’ — there was the picture there he said ‘look at the people there’s a smile on every face’ and yes there was. Every face I could see was smiling. They had the same expression on their face as if you had superimposed a picture in the ring of two monkeys at the zoo flinging poo at each other’s faces.”

“They didn’t have the look of ‘oh my god, my hero has won a big match!’ or they didn’t have the smile or the laugh of ‘ah the babyface just took the piss out of the heel and boy did he look like a dumb f-ck!’ They didn’t have the ‘oh my god I wanna kill the guy who just beat my favorite wrestler I wanna see a rematch, he deserves another chance!’ They didn’t have any of those emotional — they didn’t have the exhilaration of watching Jack Briscoe and Dory Funk Jr. in a 60-minute Broadway with both guys f-cking flailing until the end and the bell ringing with their f-cking spent bodies laying in the middle of the ring.”

“There’s all kinds of f-cking facial expressions you can have. You can have joy, or anger, or sad — they weren’t crying when Ricky Morton was selling and hurt or when Ricky Steamboat lost the Mid-Atlantic Championship. There’s all kinds of facial expressions and emotions you can have in wrestling without permanently etching in those people’s mind that the big American star came over. And the first time maybe some of them have seen Mick Foley in person and he gave himself a bump from another guy’s — and underneath guy’s d-ck.”

Cornette talked about how some of the people in the crowd might have dreamed about the first time they’d see Mick Foley as Corney put Foley over as one of the greatest wrestlers of the modern-era. “The memory that they go home with is that he took a bump for an underneath guy’s d-ck and wrestling sure was fun.”

“So I’m not mad at Mick Foley, and I’m not gonna knock Mick Foley, and I still love Mick Foley but I’ve never said these words before in public: I’m disappointed in Mick Foley.”

In the end, Jim Cornette said the reason Mick Foley did the spot was because Mick is too nice to be in the wrestling business. But sometimes you just need to learn how to say no.

If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit The Jim Cornette Experience with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription