Santino Marella and Jim Cornette recently collided in Detroit at a fan convention. It was a blow-up after years of holding resentment for each other and boy was it intense.
“Maybe [Santino] had been waiting twelve years to — yeah, whatever,” Dave Meltzer remarked about the incident on Wrestling Observer Radio. It’s too soon to tell how big of a deal this whole Jim Cornette/Santino situation is going to be. But it has the start of an event which could have a lasting impression already.
The heat between Santino and Jim Cornette was already notable before this incident in Detroit. They have spoken about each other in shoot interviews and haven’t held much back. It all stemmed from a spot in Ohio Valley Wrestling back when Cornette was running the show.
The Boogeyman was just starting his gimmick and Corney needed everyone to sell how scary this man in makeup was. But Santino didn’t act afraid, instead he started smiling and chuckled while The Boogeyman was tearing his way through the crowd.
After Santino’s grinning incident, Corney berated him backstage and ended up slapping Santino a couple of times. Meltzer said he recalled getting calls from people that night talking about how WWE was going to be forced to fire Cornette for this physical assault. It might have only been a slap but it was certainly against company policy. Meltzer also commented if Santino had retaliated it would have cost him his job as well.
Thankfully, Santino wasn’t fired that night because if he had been then we’d never have the Milan Miracle we know today. But things must have been brewing between Cornette and Santino because they recently met at the Legends Of Cobo event in Detroit, MI and it was not a happy reunion.
New video of the incident shows Corney asking Santino if he’d like him to slap him again. He said he’s already done it before and it didn’t appear Corney would have had an issue going for round two. Jim Cornette will probably have more than a few things to say about this on his podcasts this week. He was so riled up Corney decided to leave the event early.
Security eventually got involved and had to separate the two. It was quite the commotion as you can see from the videos taken by a few brave souls willing to put their safety on the line in order to provide the internet with more great internetting material to internet with. Don’t you just love the internet?
