As noted, legendary pro wrestling manager Jim Cornette recently questioned Shinsuke Nakamura’s chances of succeeding on the main roster in WWE, pointing to Vince McMahon’s storied history when it comes to promoting international wrestlers.
On a recent episode of his “Jim Cornette Experience” podcast, Cornette elaborated on his thoughts regarding Nakamura’s future in WWE. Below are some of the highlights.
On Shinsuke Nakamura needing Vince McMahon to be a true success on the WWE main roster:
“Nakamura’s going to be an instant star in NXT for as long as he’s there. His success on the main roster depends on the chairman, as [Jim Ross] says, how Vince McMahon sees him in pretty much, the long run, because Vince’s overwhelming success with luchadors or guys from Europe. How long did it take even Steve Regal to get a chance to get over, William Regal [or] the guys from Japan?”
On the time Vince McMahon wanted to have WWF mid-card stars beat top AAA stars brought in for their “Super Astros” show and how that relates to Nakamura’s chances of succeeding in WWE:
“Well, at one point, Vince also says, ‘well, while they’re here,’ apparently, he started penciling these guys that Peña would bring up to feature on the Super Astros show in on like Shotgun Saturday Night, I don’t know what, the B-show or whatever, something on Sunday Night Heat, and he was going to beat them with like an undercard WWF guy. And he didn’t understand even if there was no internet at that point and communication wasn’t instant, just for Peña to bring his champion up for this supposed business relationship and Vince to beat him on the B-show with an underneath guy, I told Vince, I said, ‘why don’t you just piss in his mouth while he’s down there?’ And he looked at me [and asked], ‘what do you mean, pal?’ I said, ‘this is the guy’s champion! If you want to do business with him, even if he is a f–king chump, you can’t just f–king knock him off.’ [McMahon replied], ‘oh, okay. I understand.’ He didn’t think that way.
“So anyway, the point was, if Vince allows Nakamura to be himself and do what got him over and hopefully allow people to ease that translation into another culture instead of having him do goddamn skits part of a f–king Saturday Night Live f–king Chinese delivery f–king sketch or whatever because he doesn’t understand how big or who the guy was in his culture, then, that could derail things, was basically the point of my statement.”
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