10 Uncredited Architects Behind WWE’s Gigantic Success
7. Jim Cornette
Jim Cornette is also responsible for the early success of WWE's developmental system.
The halfhearted Stamford Farm experiment aside, the WWF was curiously reactive in the early stages of developmental. Cornette didn't foresee the end of ECW, nor WCW, but still recognised in 1999 that the U.S. landscape was drying out. "Let's start this thing now," he said. "In five years' time, we're really gonna need it." Cornette was also a low key component behind the company's transition away from family friendly wrestling in the mid-to-late 1990s. When he could no longer stand the politicised environment, he offered to formalise the embryonic developmental system.
Five years later, John Cena and Batista co-headlined the main event of WrestleMania 21, then the highest-grossing wrestling pay-per-view of all time. Both were trained in and developed at Cornette's Ohio Valley Wrestling. OVW, in Cornette's words, was full service. Previously, the WWF trained talent in a warehouse and sent them to hilariously unregulated Memphis leagues for live experience. In OVW, talent trained from scratch and supplemented that with crucial spot show and television experience. That show, at it its peak, was a beloved fringe critical sensation.
Alongside Jim Ross, who acted as WWE's Head of Talent Relations and scouted Brock Lesnar among many others, Cornette had a direct hand in securing the company's long term future. It didn't last - the fallout was spectacular and demands your attention, so please, order my book - but the Class of 2002, three of which remain to this day WWE's top three acts, was taught by the Louisville Lip.