10 Times WWE Actually Worked With Other Companies
4. SMW - Just One Cornette? Oh...
Smokey Mountain Wrestling was more than just a passion project for Jim Cornette, but it certainly was a project with an awful lot of passion.
The company ran for four years out of Tennessee with a philosophy that stayed fairly close to the tagline that greeted viewers every week - "Professional wrestling the way it used to be, and the way you liked it". The statement felt as much a jibe at Vince McMahon's expense as anybody else's, yet the two sides worked cordially together for some of WWE's leaner years thanks in part to Cornette's prominent on-screen role alongside Yokozuna and others.
The crossover peaked in 1993 at November's Survivor Series when The Heavenly Bodies defeated The Rock & Roll Express for the SMW Tag Team Championships. Jimmy Del Ray and Tom Prichard worked for both companies at the time, but a victory on the larger of the two stages did much for their aura on both sides of the divide.
Fondly thought of until its closure, SMW often proved to be an unofficial feeder for McMahon, giving him a glimpse of the next generation of potential signees from an independent scene he'd mostly demolished. It was this philosophy that bred something bigger as the decade wore on...