10 Funniest Wrestling Shoot Stories
3. A Tale Of Three Jims
One more Jim Cornette story, because… well, it’s Jim Cornette, motormouthed king of the shoot.
It’s no secret that Cornette left WCW under a cloud when Jim Herd was running things. October 1990 saw him depart with the Midnight Express, the tag team he managed, enraged over Herd’s total lack of understanding of the wrestling business. A year later, Herd’s very public disagreement with NWA champion Ric Flair over the direction that the championship should take saw him actually fire the Nature Boy while he still held the title.
The repercussions and ramifications of this decision have been written about elsewhere… but no one understood them better than Cornette, a wily pro wrestling guru of the old school. Sensing with some satisfaction that Herd’s stubborn refusal to learn about the business he was running might well cost him his job, Cornette gleefully sent him a funeral wreath in the mail, with a card attached simply saying, ‘Condolences on the death of your wrestling company, best wishes Jim Cornette and The Midnight Express.’
Unfortunately for Cornette, the courier firm that delivered the flowers didn’t complete the sign-off, leaving it as simply "Jim" on the card. The story goes that Jim Herd had completely forgotten that Jim Cornette existed, and thought they were from Jim Ross, WCW’s lead announcer and head of broadcasting, causing no little uproar behind the scenes before the mix-up was straightened out.