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RADICAN: Guest Booker with Jim Cornette delivers one of the best shoot releases of 2009 Aug 25, 2009 - 2:41:20 PM
The latest release from the Guest Booker series from KayfabeCommentaries.com with Jim Cornette re-booking WWE's botched invasion angle is arguably one of the best releases from the shoot genre I've ever seen. If you think about it, what better choice could be made to rebook one of the biggest disasters in wrestling history than Jim Cornette?
The idea behind the Guest Booker series is for each volume to be a study of the booking mind of the subject. Jim Cornette succeeds in conveying his booking style and more in a fascinating look at how his mind works on this release, which lasts nearly three hours.
Some may be skeptical that this release is just an exercise in fantasy booking. In some ways it is, but Cornette goes above and beyond here, as all of the guest booker releases do to establish his booking philosophies and talk about specific experiences with booking in the past before doing their booking exercise.
Nobody from the WWE is safe on the first disc of this release, as Cornette talks about his frustrations while working in the WWE. There are also many sidebars from Cornette during his re-booking of the invasion angle. Cornette unloads in unforgettable fashion on Kevin Dunn and Bruce Pritchard while talking about his frustrations of booking OVW television while WWE management constantly screwed with his booking plans in various ways.
Cornette's rants are hilarious and most of the time he's dead-on in his critiques of the people he worked for. Jim Herd from WCW is also spared no love from Cornette, as he explodes on his management style as well when talking about working on the WCW creative team.
The booking exercise begins with Cornette saying, "They (the fans) gotta believe it." Cornette establishes right off the bat that the fans had to believe WCW and WWF were actually at war with each other. Vince McMahon waited months to launch the invasion angle and the first WCW match on WWE television was Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell. Cornette notes that it was absurd that two WCW wrestlers fought each other on WWE television.
Cornette lays the groundwork for the invasion angle by saying that WWF and WCW wrestlers would be placed on two different shows because Vince McMahon would uncomfortable having them work together right away. Cornette establishes that WCW wrestlers would appear on Raw the week McMahon bought WCW and indicate that they wouldn't do business with WWE wrestlers in the ring without using those words.
Cornette then launches into a lengthy summary month-by-month leading up to the next WrestleMania of how he would build up the young talent on the undercard and have some shoot-style matches between WCW and WWF wrestlers, but no major stars would collide until things reached a boiling point at WrestleMania.
Cornette's ideas are really interesting to listen to and his philosophy of building up the next generation of talent is sound. The invasion angle concludes with a huge card at WrestleMania pitting WCW stars vs. WWE stars with the employment of both rosters on the line depending on which company won the majority of matches on the card.
I highly recommend this release. It's worth every penny and Cornette doesn't just book the angle and throw guys together, but he talks about why his booking would or wouldn't work based on the personalities involved. As usual, KayfabeCommentaries production values are excellent and there are even some outtakes included to break things up with Cornette talking about different people in the industry.
You can purchase "Guest Booker with Jim Cornette" by clicking here.
Sean Radican and co-host Derek Burgan record ROH themed audios on the Radican Audio Showcase on most weekends that are made available exclusively to Torch VIP members. Sean also reviews nearly every ROH DVD release for Torch VIP members.
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