Also a video if you are interested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab2Myj-FsTg&t=1s Super Smash Bros is a Nintendo series that saw its first entry release (in North America) on April 26th 1999. In this game you play as your favorite Nintendo character, either Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Link, Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Samus, Kirby, Fox, Ness, or Captain Falcon. Well, your favorite out of this selection. Anyways you play as one of those characters and duke it out against fellow Nintendo Mascots. Which as all smash bros videos, this one included will tell you, put an end to the eternal childhood debate for who’s stronger. Except not really because tier lists are a thing. The premise of Smash bros is very original, especially at the time. In most fighting games, your character is very imobile and shuffles along the ground and you attack your opponent in very specific ways and places using a variety of attacks. It's similar to Zelda 2 just with options when “swinging your sword”. You use these moves in order to lower your opponent's lifebar and to prevent your own from being lowered. Once someone's health has reached zero they lose the round. You play again until someone has won 2 rounds out of three. Of course not every game is best two out of three, and even in the games that are i'm sure you can alter this in settings. This is also just a BASIC overview of what I believe to be most fighting games. There are bound to be differences and hidden complexities I didn’t mention. Now why did a person who has only played one classical fighting game when he was 6 describe the prevalent fighting sub genre? So I can describe what makes Smash Bros Unique, clearly. Frankly I’d be disappointed if you didn’t see it coming.
Unlike typical fighting games Super Smash bros doesn’t have a traditional health bar. Instead it has a percent system that goes up to a maximum of 999.99% (except for the first one which goes up to just 999%.). Once you reach that percent it won’t go higher. Since you have essentially infinite life how could you possibly lose? It’s simple! Super smash bros is won through knock back. Characters have moves that do more knock back than others. If one is hit by one of these abilities their percent increases and they fly back a little bit. (depending on the move.) Your percent serves as a multiplier for how far you get knocked. Your character's weight is also a modifier. The lower the weight the farther you will get knocked back. The goal is to knock the enemy off the map and not get knocked off yourself. Because of this, fighters have to be more mobile. Capable of a lot of quick horizontal and vertical movement. As the “Expert” Smash bros focuses more on spacing than the classical fighters of yor. Not to say those fighting games aren’t about spacing, they just seem to focus more on using the correct moves at the correct time. (Again not saying that smash doesn’t focus on this as well.)
From what I have heard the original smash bros is a fun game when played casually, but if you decided to play the game competitively, well I have bad news for you, the thing I described the game as earlier, fun, well thats not true anymore. A competitive community tends to sustain most fighting games. So Super smash brothers remained a relatively niche n64 game in this primitive first installment for 2 years. Until Melee.
When I say smash bros melee I am certain a lot of things come to mind. Since I wasn’t around I’ll just try and extrapolate. On December third 2001 Super Smash Bros Melee was released in America. Melee is also the most purchased game cube game with a total 7 million units sold compared to the MEAGER 5.55 million sales of its predecessor. What can we learn from this data? Well I can say a few adages, a good game sells its sequel, and uhh people were excited to play as the new characters? I think it's memorable. Basically Smash melee was the first smash game to go mainstream. In the original super smash brothers only the protagonists and most Iconic characters from main nintendo franchises were in the game. This does leave out a few odd balls since Ness, Falcon, and Jigglypuff were in the game. Maybe the 90’s was a very different time, the specific mascots were more popular in other countries, or Sakurai just wanted them in for some reason and my metric system is wrong.
Smash Melee introduces more characters including villains, some really obscure ones, and even more main characters! Despite the massive increase of characters people always want more, and there were more to give. Around school yards everywhere people began to “Reveal” to their friends that certain characters were actually playable in game. Like Sonic and Master Hand. (Technically master hand is playable but whatever that's beside the point.) Unlike most games Super Smash bros builds off of a pre existing catalogue of characters so every single video game character is a potential candidate for smash. Thus people can discuss potential characters way easier than something like Apex Legends, who reveals a random character no one has heard of until that moment and since smash bros became a known and celebrated thing because of this game, speculation began to grow into the familiar beast we know today. The thing is, despite the rumors about Sonic coming to Melee the only characters who are in smash are Nintendo characters
Brawl was revealed sometime in 2006. It began with familiar smash characters getting their new “High definition” renders. The trailer continued, with newcomer after newcomer being revealed. All of them, Nintendo characters. Until everything changed with Snakes reveal. Snake is the first third party character to be introduced into Smash bros and if anyone has ever heard of Metal gear solid (Probably not to be honest it's really niche.) They know that the game isn’t exactly E for everyone. Essentially Snake broke almost all the barriers when he got into smash. Along the road to Brawls reveal another third party character was revealed to be in smash. All 90’s kids rejoice, Sonic is in Smash. Sonic was essentially Mario’s rival, until… a few things happened. But that doesn’t matter Sonic and Snake are both third party video game characters. The floodgates are open, every major video game character is fair game, kinda. Sparking discussion and speculation for who could be next. If we add the internet into the equation then speculation took place not only in person but also across the world. Everyone could toss their Ridley fanfiction at each other and shoot down another's master chief speculation piece.
I have no idea how much Melee was advertised but from what I have heard Brawl was the first smash game to Really capitalize on the concept of smash by making it an event. This is shown by the smash dojo website which apparently revealed information about brawl every week leading up to its release and even continuing after. This website has a great line in an article where the writer sums up the story of Subspace emissary, Brawls story mode. The line is, “However, since Mr. Game & Watch does not have any concept of good and evil.” it continues a bit more but that's the good part. Regardless, Brawl truly built up a lot of hype for its release. It was released march 9th 2008 with online multiplayer! Unfortunately the online was bad, and it was a less than stellar fighting game. (It was a good party game though.) Some characters that were in melee weren’t in this newer smash bros title. Despite these mechanical shortcomings it really began to build the casually hardcore community, by this I mean people who were really invested In the significance of a character being recognized as important enough to make it in and speculating about other video game characters who could also be seen as legends. Although they are invested in this side of smash they tend not to play competitively even though they may play quite a bit on their own, basically they play a lot of smash but they play other games too. Despite brawl being an unpopular entry people were not declaring Smash bros dead, they were awaiting the next entry. One that would arrive six years later.
While smash bros brawl began to acknowledge and take advantage of what smash is Smash bros for the wii u and 3ds took what worked and expanded on it. Instead of the typical smash trailer formula of showcasing the character and briefly interrupting that showcase with a goofy moment, they began to put full blown cinematics as introductions to the new characters as well as the traditional new character formula. Sometimes you could tell immediately who the new character is other times you were on the edge of your seat wondering who is finally coming to smash. It was a great time! Masahiro soccer guy followed up the popular smash dojo with the almost forgotten, but recently revived pic of the day. From june 11th 2013 to december 5th 2014 Sakurai posted photos of the upcoming smash bros titles every weekday. Some of the photos were pretty cool showing new things coming into the new game… games? No one knows. However a decent chunk of them were pictures Sakurai just found neat, pictures that really didn’t share anything meaty about the game. The less interesting pictures tended to appear more frequently during the beginning of the pic of the day and began to get more interesting leading up to the multiple releases of the game. The pic of the day was released on both the official website for these games and miiverse, nintendo’s fallen social media like thing.
Smash for the wii u was released in North America on november 21st and introduced 2 new third party characters at the cost of removing one. Pac man and Mega man were added to smash at the quote on quote cost of Snake. Konami just didn't want him in smash anymore. This along with the removal of the ice climbers and most of the pokemon trainer crew added to the ever growing list of characters getting removed from smash. Which is interesting because one of those characters who was removed at the time stood among the most requested characters. Such a shame that MewTwo isn't in the game. At this period Nintendo was just getting into selling Dlc so when MewTwo was announced as a dlc fighter everyone was excited, even I who didn’t even know of mewtwo before this was excited. Of course this one event opened up the possibilities of more dlc fighters and they came, at first the only Dlc fighters you could buy were characters from previous games that didn’t end up making the cut, but finally a new character no one could have predicted (unless it was leaked.) was revealed, ryu. But let's back up a bit. In May a sharing mode was added to the game in this mode you could share mii fighters, snapshots, replays, and stages. You could make stages and share them online. No other fighting game allows you to create and share maps that you make, then again few fighting games are as map dependent as smash bros. So being able to share your own maps and download others is a huge addition to the game.
Back to ryu. Ryu comes from street fighter, a well known fighting game belonging to the classical fighting games genre I mentioned earlier. As a child I was surprised about his inclusion, smash and street fighter are competitors are they not? Both are well established and have their own public images to uphold. Smash bros has the reputation of being the home to sweaty nerds, the worst kind and is seen as a lesser fighting game by true Fighting purists. The sweaty nerds who play classical fighting games. These two communities are very different but for me ryu’s inclusion formed a bridge between the two. If someone who plays street fighter calls smash players stinky because they play smash, the smash player can come back with what is essentially no u. As a character ryu feels way more rigid when compared to other smash characters. Hopefully this gives a classical fighting game feel that people who play classical fighting games will be familiar with, while still operating under smash bros unique rules. So not only is ryu a surprising third party addition that adds to smash’s ever growing third party catalogue but it attempts to bridge a sub genre gap. Along with Ryu a few other characters came to smash. The biggest character who was introduced was Cloud Strife from final fantasy seven. Final Fantasy seven seems to be a pretty important game for the generation older than mine. Since Final Fantasy is a pretty big series this all compounds to be a pretty big reveal. So smash bros continued making Dlc, Corrin a fire emblem sword fighter character with a unique moveset, and Bayonetta, a none sword fighter character not from fire emblem. I refuse to comment any more on her and smash four.
Smash Ultimate was soft revealed at the end of a nintendo direct on march 8th 2018. In which the inklings surrounding area turns from white to black with a burning smash logo behind them. We get a close up of mario and links face before ending on the burning smash logo once more which then transitions into half of the new logo. A couple months passed before we got new information until in june 12 2018 it was revealed that everyone is here. Every single character that has ever been in smash is in this one. Including Dlc characters. Even Snake is back. However this isn't the only fanservice thing that this iteration of smash bros accomplishes. They introduced one character thought too big for smash and another that just didn’t appear but should have. Ridley and King K rool. Both of these characters were highly requested additions, more so ridley than king k. They also introduced more characters like Incineroar, the belmonts, and isabelle from animal crossing. Even piranha plant which led to the creation of a horrendous meme which I will not repeat in order to preserve integrity.
This all led up to the day before smash ultimates release. December fifth the same day The 2018 game awards were being held. Major events like this that announce games tend to have one last surprise. The game awards announced that Joker from persona 5 is coming to smash bros ultimate as DLC. This announcement altered speculation on future fighters. Previously people who thought minecraft steve was getting into smash were seen as a “probably not but who knows. Sakuraii sure is WaCKy!” but now Steve was a legitimate possibility. As the year continued more characters were revealed and released beginning with the plant itself on january 30th 2019, which was then followed up by joker on april 17th. Joker was released alongside version 3.0 which introduced stage builder into smash ultimate and the share feature. A bit of time passes in which no news of the next fighter was revealed. At E3 2019 during the nintendo block (June 11) the next two were revealed. The second character being Hero from the dragon quest franchise, Four of the Hero’s were playable in smash just alternate skins. The third character revealed near the end of the E3 Nintendo direct was Banjo and Kazooie. Hero is popular in Japan and Banjo is popular in North America. Hero was released on july 30th with banjo being released on sept 4th, the same day the fourth character was revealed. Terry Bogard from the fatal fury series. This character is mostly known in Latin America. Terry came out on November sixth. Leaving one last character to come out of the first fighter pass. The controversial Byleth.
Throughout the entire script I have gone through a history of smash without really addressing the scripts title. The higher ups at nintendo have also been saying this, however unlike most corporate phrases that are used I don't believe this one to be completely vapid and soules. In fact during the 2019 game awards mr doug bowser called smash bros more than a fighting game which I completely ignored at the time because I mistook it for meaningless drivel. But it wasn't, it isn’t. So, what makes Smash more than a fighting game?
The reason I was inspired to write this script is Sakurai’s comment on smash ultimate being more than a fighting game and the community reaction to Byleth. After an entire Dlc season of third party characters the release of a First party character, nay, a first party fire emblem character is naturally not preferable to put it lightly. But that's the point. People were not judging Byleth as a fighter. They were primarily judging them as a character and franchise as I have too. Throughout the video I have focused less on the mechanics or meta of the game but instead the inclusion of the characters and in some instances the impact they had. When Byleth was first revealed a lot of people were calling them out as just another fire emblem character. A sword character just like all the others. This may counter my point of people only focusing on the franchise but I don’t think it does, In Byleths and a lot of the newer fire emblem characters their introductory teaser asks in a roundabout way for the fans not to judge them as just sword characters. (Robin and byleth. so 2 out of 3.)
And Byleth doesn’t just use a sword, they use a bow, spear, and hammer as well. So I think when people saw fire emblem they put on their lucina, chrom, and Ike lensed sunglasses and filtered everything else out. I saw a lot of people who instead of judging the cool-ness or potential of the moveset judged byleth as said a thousand times by the fact that they are a fire emblem character. Now let me ask you a question, what other series would have this type of reception to a content reveal? By this I mean not even focusing on the content presented. In other games and communities the trailer would be analysed in an attempt at uncovering the mechanics behind the content before it releases. However with Byleths reveal people were not studying the content, they were uncovering the package the content was delivered in, people were wrapped up in smash’s gimmick of recognizable video game characters fighting each other. Fighting games in general focus on the competitive aspect of what games can be, with a very tight mechanical focus and steep learning curve. This generally fosters a community that constantly tries to better itself. Which is what makes it so strange when people aren’t focusing on the mechanics of the character but instead acknowledging the character and their significance. Even though the character wasn’t out at this time Sakurai did show a lot of Byleths Gameplay at the reveal which gives people a bit to speculate about.
Smash’s crossover is more prestigious than other games like rivals of ether with steam workshop or playstation all stars because Smash has established itself over the years and will most likely be really good. Smash has coalesced into a massive crossover event helped by the fact that a large chunk of smash players belong to that casually hardcore grouping. We play other games as well as smash. We are experienced gamers (yes I used the G word.) we have played all sorts of different games collectively giving actual impact to the character reveals. This is played off of masterfully by Nintendo who since brawl acknowledge the power of the largely untapped potential and history we all carry. This history is added onto smash bros, along with all the other adventures you have gone on with or as the characters in smash. Your first Nintendo game as a kid, and your current favorite game of all time. The series has evolved from playing as your favorite Nintendo character to playing as your favorite videogame character. This is why half of the Dlc was dedicated to including characters that are very popular in specific parts of the world. These characters all hold a place in our hearts, maybe not individually but collectively, all aroaund the world, they mean something to us. Even people I know who don’t play smash bros often care about who makes it in. They continue to follow the game despite not playing it, because it does and could include games and characters that they love. This past and current passion now fuels smash into what is becoming a celebration of gaming, or in other words something more than a fighting game.
(Apologies for the length, I had more to say that I realised!)
Hello, my name is James and I am the former owneoperator of the Jim Cornette’s Talking Sense YouTube channel! I’ve just got back off a 10 day holiday and skimmed through a brief Reddit synopsis of Jim Cornette’s brainless rant as it pertains to my (former) Talking Sense channel. I thought I would - with my first ever post on Reddit - set the record straight with actual facts, instead of the mindless fumblings of a middle-aged technophobe and his co-host.
Before I begin I want to stress two things:
- Corny can cry and whine about me all he wants, I will always have great respect for his professional career and shall continue to enjoy his work on the rare times I watch classic wrestling.
- I knew from day one it would turn out this way.
A tiny bit about me – I live in Manchester, England, early 30’s and a lapsed wrestling fan – I stopped watching wrestling weekly in 2002 and finally gave up on wrestling altogether after the WWECW debacle and never looked back. After a slew of wrestling podcasts, starting with The Steve Austin Show, came out around 2013, I regained a passing interest in the backstage aspects of the business. In my teens and 20s I also created a lot of short films and projects and had a reasonably successful YouTube channel in the platform’s infancy. When Corny’s podcast came out, I used a couple of clips from his show as a tester for some new editing software. This quickly developed into a fan channel that I updated while at my previous job.
After a while, my channel was gaining traction and I thought it proper to contact MLW’s head honcho Court Bauer to work out a deal that would see me become the official YouTuber for the Experience podcast. His response was to copyright strike every one of my videos with no email reply. Annoying, but that’s his prerogative... or so I thought. I’m no lawyer, but Jim himself told me he owns the rights to all his shows, including the ones under the MLW banner, and Court never asked Jim’s permission on the issue. Jim explained to me that he felt that Court, when confronted with a decision, would always make the wrong one.
Skipping ahead, 2016 rolls around and I decide to give the channel another shot. I’d created a lot of clips during the original run and, if nothing else, it seemed a shame not to post the old videos when so many people had enjoyed them during the initial run. I also created little photo-shopped images of Jim to every clip, which got a great reaction and allowed me to exercise a little creativity that I found a lot of fun to do. By early 2017 the channel had gone crazy with views (1.5 million per month +). Around that time I created an image of Jim as Matt Damon in The Martian. This image accompanied a clip of Jim reading an email from a mad fan/troll who suggested a storyline revolving around a wrestler being rescued from Mars! This got back to Jim, who mused on Experience Ep #168 just who exactly was creating these clips in the first place. This is when I contacted them explaining who I was and whether they’d be interested in working together. I dealt with Brian over the course of a few days, we agreed a percentage of revenue, and everything looked to be going well. Brian announced on the Experience that I was to be the only approved Cornette YouTube channel, whilst also posting Cornette content on his personal channel, Arcadian Vanguard.
Here’s a mini-rant: I know why Brian wanted to have his own Cornette channel (so they could keep all the revenue from that channel themselves) and that’s perfectly understandable. But why do such a bad job of it? Why wouldn’t you change the name to Jim Cornette Official or whatever? Why have brutally shitty intro music to every clip and have ugly, unattractive thumbnails? Why post 12 clips altogether at once at a random time? Despite Brian advertising his YouTube channel on every show, even at the end of its run, AC only generated a quarter of subs/views that JCTS did. Jim Ross, Bruce Prichard and Vince Russo are also popular wrestling personalities with a strong YouTube presence, but they also didn’t get anywhere near JCTS’s numbers, so maybe I was just doing something right that the rest weren’t, who knows?
In March 2017, the great YouTube advertising boycott kicked off over “brand safety”, and what would have been a good deal for all became barely worth it within a matter of weeks. -
https://www.recode.net/2017/3/30/15128654/youtube-creators-revenue-drop-brand-safety-controversy - I stuck with the channel with the theory that the revenue would eventually get back to what it was. It did partially by the end of the year, but that’s a different story.
By the beginning of 2018, JCTS was hitting an amazing 4 million views per month, and Jim, like all old-school wrestling personalities, saw the gate (revenue) and decided that the cut had to change. At that point I also felt it was reasonable, so we agreed a new split, and things carried on as normal for the next few months. On our Skype call (which was the only time I spoke directly with Jim) he said we were officially partners going forward.
Around May/June 2018, Brian’s channel was demonetised. Jim apparently took this news so well that he was caught smashing up stuff in his garage when Brian called! The reason Brian was eventually given was “duplication”. This can mean one of many things, but Brian (and therefore Jim, as he doesn’t understand anything of the YouTube side) decided it was because my channel was the bigger of the two, and therefore YouTube had automatically decided Brian was stealing “my” content. My contention is I’m very doubtful that is the reason. Here’s what YouTube had to say in a blog post 3 months ago:
“Today we are excited to announce the new Copyright Match tool, which is designed to find re-uploads of your content on other channels. Here's how it works: after you upload a video, YouTube will scan other videos uploaded to YouTube to see if any of them are the same or very similar. When there is a match, it will appear in the "matches" tab in the tool and you can decide what to do next.”
As I had just reached 100,000 subs, this meant I was eligible to activate the tool. I, of course, never did because I wasn’t told to and there was no benefit to it, and therefore never received any emails from YouTube telling me of any matches to “my” content. The other reason I’m not buying Brian’s “duplication” theory is that the audio is not copyright ID’d. When I tried to re-post my original “copyright claim” videos they were rejected. I switched the images with no editing of the audio and all were posted with no issues. It’s basically that easy to get around the system with non-content ID’d videos. My contention was that Brian had posted some videos from (I think), Memphis wrestling and NWA, as well as Enzo Amore’s rap song. I deleted my Enzo video just in case.
I contacted YouTube multiple times on Brian’s behalf with no luck. They simply won’t deal with anyone who isn’t the YouTuber in question. This included giving YT Brian’s information to contact him directly and also asking for any videos of mine to be taken off of any auto-content ID system they may have put me on, but to no avail.
Late July/early August, on one of our seemingly never-ending and rapidly tedious Skype calls, Brian announced that Jim had decided (AKA Brian had planted the idea in Jim’s head) that my channel was the reason that AC had been demonetised. I was told that Jim was now focusing on my channel heavily, and that he set a date of September 1st for everything to be resolved or else he wanted all of his content pulled from both of our channels.
Shortly after, on another call, Brian said that some joker who was in some way associated with Bill Watts had contacted Jim out of the blue to offer to take down my channel. This seems like a strange coincidence to me. Also, during our last couple of conversations, Brian intimated to me out of the blue that Jim would consider legal action if I refused to take down the videos. This one really got my back up, as at no point had I said I’d refuse to take down the videos if instructed.
Brian also suggested that Jim was going to ask for a huge bump in the advertising cut. The number Brian suggested basically didn’t work for me, as, despite earning pretty decent money from the channel, the last few months had been absolutely no fun. The constant emails and calls from Brian telling me how pissed off Jim was with the situation and the extra work I was putting into JCTS around my actual job was making me pretty miserable. To clarify, I wasn’t doing 40 hours a week, but I was certainly putting in nearly all of my free time to the channel, and the extra care and attention I’d put into picking the clips (old and new), the right descriptions, key words, moderating the conversations and, most importantly, the thumbnails, is the main reason I was far more successful than Brian ever was with his channel. I also started creating compilations, which were great for viewership and ad revenue but was another drain on my time.
I agreed to take a smaller split in theory and ramp down production significantly, sticking only to clipping new shows, as Brian hadn’t posted anything for months. When we were both posting I held back on some new content to give people a reason to listen to the podcast in full. Brian would post basically everything from every new show.
Then the real reason for all these calls slowly seemed to emerge. Jim wanted my YouTube channel. I don’t mean buy it, he basically wanted it, and - from the impression I got, but I could be wrong - Jim felt that JCTS should be his. They said that if I GIVE them my channel, then they would keep me on as their content creator – A job I foresaw myself keeping for about 3 seconds before they changed the password to JCTS (as well as my personal email and other stuff) and told me that to save money Brian could create his brand of sub par content and cut me out entirely.
I’d like to use an analogy I’ve recently repeated to some of my friends and family - let’s say you have a cinema and all the movies you show are owned by Warner Bros. You have a verbal agreement to give Warner Bros., let’s say, 50% of the revenue of every ticket you sell to one of their movies. Then let’s say the executive of Warner Bros. had a bad day, kicks the door into your cinema, demands a much higher percentage of every ticket you sell and, oh, by the way, Warner Bros. now owns the cinema.
Get fucked!
By the end of August the September 1st deadline was looming. Not wanting to take the chance that Jim was bluffing, I once again went on the all-out offensive to get Brian’s channel re-monetised. Since I can access personal chats to Google and Brian can’t, I explained the situation to a YouTube representative. They asked me for my channel link and told me to wait a minute while they checked it. They took well over 10 minutes, which I thought was strange, then told me the usual story that they can’t talk to me about another channel’s affairs.
A couple of days later my channel was demonetised due to receiving community strikes revolving around threatening/abusive language/behaviour - which, quite frankly, could apply to most of the videos posted - but the videos that were in violation were political (Trump, Huckabee Sanders, Republican Rant comps, etc) as well as a Vince Russo hate video.
By this point I’d straight up had enough as the stress of the last couple of weeks were seriously taking its toll on me. It doubly irked that I was contacting YouTube on someone else’s behalf. I’d avoided contacting YT more-or-less entirely, as I’d always known some of Cornette’s rants were against YouTube’s strict – and getting stricter every month – policies, and didn’t want any attention drawn to JCTS.
I was told YT would get back to me in 7-10 days. I waited a week with nothing, and then I went for a few days mini-holiday to get away from it all. By the time I came home and checked my computer, the channel was down. Brian emailed me asking what had happened and I emailed back saying it was taken down and I couldn’t get into my email either. Brian emailed back pretty much saying he thought I’d taken the channel down, so I sent him a screen grab of the “unable to find Google product” page I was confronted with. I’ve written back to YouTube asking for a review, but these days they can take months to get a reply from.
Shortly before I went on my dream holiday to Japan on the 18th of September, I sent Brian a very nice email thanking both he and Jim for the opportunity to work with them, and although the last couple of months had sucked a fat one, I’d always be appreciative of the chance they afforded me. I also quit my fledgling podcast on the Arcadian Vanguard network entitled The Non-Fan’s Guide to Wrestling with my brother Christian and our friend Phil. I thought we were terrible, but we got a lot of very positive and enthusiastic feedback from some of AC’s diehard fans (John Fell in particular stands out in my mind). I quit that show as well as it was taking me an entire day every week to prepare, record and edit all of the audio AND video into a Joe Rogan-style podcast and YouTube show. Also, the numbers were quite frankly pretty poor and didn’t improve over time, even though we received much encouragement from those who did listen.
A day or two later, my sister channel “Wrestlers Talking Sense” received a load of bogus copyright strikes from “Bruce Prichard” – strange, as none of the clips were from his podcast “Something to Wrestle With” or even featured Bruce Prichard at all! I also went out of my way to get permission to post the clips in question, which were from Kayfabe Commentaries, who were and still are very receptive to having clips of their shows posted as long as you credit them. I don’t believe in coincidences, and the timing was remarkably strange considering I’d just effectively given my notice, and Brian and Jim had both talked about “getting my videos taken down” and “knowing how to do it” in our final conversations.
To Summarise
Of the two years I ran what was the current Jim Cornette’s Talking Sense channel, all but the last few months were fun. The final two months, with constant pressure to correct a situation I didn’t cause and couldn’t do anything about, as well as what I perceive to be gradually forcing me into situations I wasn’t happy with, pushed my stress levels through the roof. The JCTS channel being removed was a blessing in disguise, but with the second channel getting copyright hit immediately after by a bogus “Bruce” (like Jim would have any idea the other channel existed – clearly information fed to him by Brian) that’s as pathetic as you can get.
I skimmed through another Reddit user’s synopsis of Jim’s rant against me (it’s strange being the topic of his legendary scorn) but didn’t study it, as it’s based on his inability to understand the situation and total horseshit fed to him by Brian. One quote I did read about me was that I was “squealing like a pig under a gate” over the situation. Well, whatever way he wants to phrase the stress he’s put me under, that’s fine. But because of his actions, he’s cost himself money, Brian money and me money too. In one of our last Skype calls, Brian was being very critical of Jim and described the situation as “Jim cutting his nose off to spite his face”, and he’s right. I prefer the phrase “throwing his toys out of the pram”, because I’ve bore witness first hand to his deep immaturity and lack of patience and, aside from costing all three of us financially, it’s robbed 100,000’s of people some amount of enjoyment derived from his-often incredibly interesting takes on wrestling and beyond, who may not listen to the actual podcasts.
In the interest of full disclosure, I earned a pretty darn decent wage from JCTS for a number of months after the YouTube advertising boycott had mostly died down, but that’s because I put the work in and made the channel work for all of us. If I’d half-arsed it like most people would, my channel would have been redundant from the get go.
Around a year or so after JCTS started rolling once again, The Experience podcast had quadrupled in monthly downloads, and in one show around the beginning of the year, Cornette claimed that (not accounting for inflation) 2017 was his most financially successful year. His best year in the wrestling business was (I believe) $250,000, and I am proud that JCTS contributed to the success of his show and furthering the rise of his profile in the wrestling business...
...but the whole situation has proved one thing to me – Jim Cornette is just like Vince Russo in one key negative way – If you can, research Vince Russo’s Pyro and Ballyhoo website debacle and the explanation from its former webmaster to understand what I mean. It’s not an exact correlation, of course, but I think there are a few similarities. It sucks to no longer work for someone you once admired, but there’s a time to realise you may be being taken advantage of and to call it a day, even though in my case, the day was called for me.
Final thoughts
Thank You
Although I’ve "bigged" myself up quite a lot through this mini-essay, I’m fully aware I merely repackaged Jim’s content and he deserves the credit entirely for every listen, like and download as he is still fantastic at what he does as far as his wrestling mind and his talking ability goes. I started posting a few videos as a fan and somehow it turned into practically a full-time job, and I’m very lucky to have been allowed to carry on these past two years. I’ve been able to work from home and wrap the editing around my other businesses and studies, which has been invaluable to me. Also I want to thank Brian for taking a chance on me on my little podcast venture – It was fun while it lasted... sort of!
Fuck You
The dealing of the whole situation has been absolute bullshit and has been handled with clown gloves as I’ve illustrated elsewhere, so there’s no need to go into the matter. Jim’s a wrestling genius, but a total retard when it comes to dealing with this type of business. On a recent show he said he stayed awake hating things, and that a “big, nameless, faceless corporation” (obviously YouTube) was one of the leading factors in this hate-induced insomnia. Any rational person could clearly see that the answer wasn’t to attempt to take my channel off me, get my videos taken down or demand a much bigger cut – it was to just let things play out and, if it couldn’t be resolved, go down a different path – not ultimately get rid of the YouTube presence and the money that came with it. Going after my other channel that had nothing to do with them is unforgivable, and I reiterate that I don’t believe in coincidences when it comes to this type of affair.
And to all the people who subscribed the channel, interacted with me on the comments section or otherwise supported JCTS, I’m personally hugely appreciative (I know it was for Jim and not me, but still hugely appreciative!) As I said at the top, I knew it would end like this – nearly all of Cornette’s relationships do...
Bye
P.S. In a strange side note, I brushed past one of Jim’s enemies, Kenny Omega, while we were both checking out the SEGA booth at the Tokyo Game Show last week!
Once again, apologies for length of this essay!
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