10 Most Uncanny Predictions Ever Made About Wrestling

10. Jim Cornette Predicts And Changes The Future

"In five years' time, we're really gonna need 'em".

Those were the words with which Jim Cornette pleaded with WWE upper management as mainstream North American wrestling faced something of an existential crisis. He knew that WCW was doomed. He hated the "goofy sh*t" ECW was doing. He knew that the independent scene of the late 20th century was nowhere near enough to replenish the talent pool that had evaporated following the collapse of the territories.

In 1999, he tasked himself with formalising the splintered and wildly unfit for purpose developmental "system" and, driven by his loathing of the culture in Connecticut and Vince Russo, reframed Ohio Valley Wrestling as the one-stop shop for building new stars. OVW booked its own shows and trained its own talent in addition to the muscle monsters dispatched there by WWE; the idea, and WWE loathed this, possibly because it made too much sense, was to emulate a competitive meritocracy. If the WWE hires weren't up to the task in a backwater burg, they stood no chance on the biggest stage.

While Cornette was a year off, WWE did need the new stars whose early careers he navigated. The promotion was performing dismally when the boom bust, as Cornette predicted it would, but by 2005's WrestleMania 21, OVW graduates John Cena and Batista posted its record PPV buy rate.

Cornette wasn't spotless - he probably still thinks Matt Morgan would draw on top of AEW - but he was an uncredited architect of WWE's future.