During a recent episode of Cornette’s Drive-Thru, Jim Cornette spoke on Steve Austin not wanting to go along with Vince Russo’s idea of feuding with Jeff Jarrett. Here’s what he had to say:
I do indeed recollect this. That’s back when [Vince] Russo had ingratiated himself with Jeff. And I don’t know how they ever actually became friends because Jeff is everything ****stain hates: old-fashioned wrestling; southern with an accent; blah blah blah. And at first, basically, the way I understand is that Russo had somehow convinced Jeff that he should come back, sign that big contract, and that he’d be in the title picture. Wasn’t it one of those deals where at that point, the guy comes in — like they did with Owen [Hart] one time, they did it with a number of people. When X-Pac came back, they have one big in-ring interview, where he says, ‘This is all real, and s***’s gonna change, and I’m the f***ing guy!’ And then it just peters out like a wet Fourth of July firecracker. That’s another hallmark of ***stain’s style of booking. You remember those big debuts, right? Where this is real and everything’s different.
So Jeff came and was convinced by ****stain, yes, he’s going to have this big main event run and blah blah blah. And Steve Austin was still mad because when he worked in Memphis in 1989, and he was making f***ing $250 a week and eating baked potatoes because he couldn’t afford anything else. And he also didn’t think, and to be quite honest, at that time he was correct — he didn’t think that people would buy it or that Jeff was at his level. Not at his level as a worker because Jeff actually — that’s the one thing nobody has ever been able to say, he had the best matches in TNA from start to finish. Every great match that TNA had had Jeff Jarrett in it because he knew what the f*** he was doing. But he had been presented as a midcard clown with the f***ing lip-syncing gimmick in 94-95. Then was before or after he had done the job for Chyna? [Before] Yes, you see this all ties together.”
Steve Austin was thinking about the underneath guy, the undercard guy, the lip-syncing guy that’s been presented there beforehand. Whatever he’d done in WCW, I didn’t pay that close attention. But he wasn’t the god damn champion because Russo’s got this wild hair, he’s going to come in and with no f***ing build he’s going to just work with the hottest guy in the f***ing business. Austin said the same thing about Marc Mero after Mero got powerbombed on pay-per-view by Sable. Nope. Not gonna happen. Because Steve Austin knew he was the hottest guy in the business and knew how to take care of that until unfortunately, he was swayed into hugging Vince McMahon on pay-per-view, and nobody ever recovered. So, it was more of Russo having these things he f***ing that thinks is gonna be great. So then, they had Jeff signed. Now, Jeff has that run, where instead of having a big run with Steve Austin like he thought he was going to have, remember he ended up being managed by Debra McMichael and whatever the f*** else they did?
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Credit: Cornette’s Drive-Thru. H/T 411Mania.