Kayfabe!: Guest Booker With Jim Cornette – The Invasion

Before I officially start this review, I’d like to thank Kayfabe Commentaries, for sending this, and other, DVDs to be reviewed.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, the Guest Booker series is a type of shoot interview. Instead of your standard interview, the concept is how the subject would book a certain territory, angle, etc. Previous releases have included Raven booking Hall and Nash had they decided to go to ECW rather than WCW and Gabe Sapolsky booking the WWE’s revival of ECW in 2006. This is the latest edition of the series, which features Jim Cornette booking the infamously botched WCW InVasion of the WWF in 2001. Which is said to be the most requested booker and the most requested subject.

Before beginning, Jim Cornette gives us some background on himself and his qualifications as a booker. He gives his opinions on being a booker versus being a wrestling writer. And it’s not a Cornette interview without some colorful language and a few tangents. If there’s one thing Cornette has a gift for, it’s storytelling and that really shines through in this DVD.

When the InVasion actually happened in Summer of 2001, Cornette was in Louisville, KY working with Ohio Valley wrestling. He gives some background on how he discovered OVW when Danny Davis was running it and how he convinced Jim Ross to invest in OVW as a developmental territory. This veers into a discussion of Jim Ross as head of talent relations versus Johnny Ace and how much better Ross was.

After about an hour of background, and general hilarity, from Cornette, we get down to business with how he’d have done things. As far as the talent roster goes, he’d have taken everyone from WCW except for Goldberg, Luger, and Zybyszko. Goldberg because of financial reasons, the fact that he was injured, and Cornette questioned his dedication to the business. He opted to not take Larry and Lex because of their long-standing grudges with Vince. He’s leaving ECW alone and signing Jerry Lynn and Nova as a team, because of their talent, Balls Mahoney because Jim always had a soft spot for him, and RVD for his charisma. Cornette also makes sure that, despite being a fantasy booking, he wants to keep things somewhat reality based. On that end, I disagree about him including Jeff Jarrett, since he’d opted not to include Luger and Zybyszko due to Vince having grudges against them, and that was the same reason that Vince didn’t keep Jarrett.

Believe it or not, Cornette actually keeps the booking of the angle very to-the-point without a lot of long tangents. He keeps WWF and WCW as separate brands, sort of like how RAW and SD were designed to be, when the brand split was created. That way it gives WCW a chance to be taken seriously by the fans and to also be run like a wrestling company ought to be run. WWF Raw is Monday nights, WCW Nitro is on Thursday nights, and they alternate PPV shows each month. Each PPV or TV only has one or two matches and angles. There are other WCW and WWF only storylines going on as well. Cornette also, for the most part, includes younger talent instead of only focusing on Austin, Rock, Sting, etc. I won’t go into everything in depth, because then there’s no reason to actually get this (and I think everyone who’s even slightly interested in the concept of fantasy booking and/or shoot interviews absolutely should).

I will talk about my favorite of the angles he had going on though. It starts with Vince forcing Terry Funk to wrestle Kane (the IC champ) so Vince could get payback for Funk supposedly no-showing on him a long time ago. However, Funk double crosses Vince gives Kane a small package and won’t let him go, and steals the IC title. Vince forces him to defend it at the September PPV, but Funk has a sick horse and no shows. Vince can’t fire him since he’s got the belt and Vince needs to get it back. This leads to the next PPV with Funk vs. Eddie Guerrero, and Eddie seems to have it won, but when he goes for the Frog splash his foot slips and he lands on his head (which Cornette assures us that Eddie is good enough to be able to work) and Funk winds up winning again. Funk finally loses the title in November to HHH. Funk wins a match in December, and the Undertaker Tombstones him so Vince can get revenge for Funk’s double cross. Funk gets the last laugh though, in January, he sticks a flaming branding iron on UT’s ass. It culminates with Terry Funk being attacked by two masked men (druids perhaps?), which is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and the big blowoff to the whole WWF/WCW issue is finally started.

The blowoff takes place at WrestleMania, in the form of a WWF vs. WCW series of 16 matches where whichever side wins the majority stays around. It appears to end tied at eight apiece, and Vince declares that WCW didn’t win the majority, so he gets to fire them all. Flair reminds Vince that after Flair beat Vince, he won five minutes with Eric Bischoff (who’d betrayed WCW to become Vince’s assistant) and Flair beat him too, which means WCW actually won and Vince can’t fire them. From there, they all merge into one big WWF.

One of the few criticisms that I can levy at Cornette’s philosophy is that he tends to go a little too much into the shoot direction. It’s nowhere near as bad as Russo in WCW, but there were a few things that exposed the business a little too much. The feud starts with five promos, Vince about buying WCW, Bischoff basically being a Vince kiss ass, Flair standing up for WCW, Austin standing up for the WWF wrestlers, and Undertaker being neutral. The promos themselves are very good, and you can picture each person saying exactly what Cornette has them saying. But there’s a line in Flair’s promo about Vince deciding whose hand goes up and whose shoulders stay down that rubbed me a bit wrong. He also had an angle where Brock Lesnar injures Ric Flair. The angle is that Vince wanted to give Brock a WWF tryout and who better than a veteran like Flair for him to test his skills against? It winds up with Brock injuring Flair’s shoulder. But there’s no payoff to the angle, Brock goes back to developmental and then goes to the full time WWF roster and that’s it