Steve Corino recently spoke with PWMania.com to discuss his time in TNA as well as his relationship with Paul Heyman. Here are the highlights.
Speak a little bit about your relationship with Paul Heyman:
“Paul was always great because he had such visions of everything but he also let everyone else talk to you or talk about their character and sit there and get your input and ask what do you think? Where do you see yourself? and I’ll never forget that because he wanted real emotion to come out he’d would give me an outline for a promo because he wanted me to like real emotion to come and that’s where I learned bad habits too because in ECW you weren’t given times you weren’t told hey you gotta get this match done in 15 minutes or 8 minutes or 6 minutes. It was go out there, kill yourselves, steal the show and we’ll clip it as far as we need it. I bring it back to Ring of Honor in 2009′ and were like hey we need a commercial break, we need this and I’m like whoa I need to learn how to work TV! It was always a positive experience.”
How was your time while in TNA and what do you remember the most during your run?
“Now when I was in TNA it was still in Nashville and very unorganized so you can’t compare the TNA of 2003-2004 to what’s now. No, I wouldn’t have foreseen it. With wrestling like with life there is always the next big thing and you hear it and if it happens cool but if it doesn’t then it’s not. Ring of Honor could sit there and tell me that we’re replacing Raw on Monday and everything like that and I’m like until I see it. I guess wrestling teaches you that but I guess life teaches you that. So I didn’t see it but I think the wrong people were always in charge of creative. I believe if you’re going to be an alternative to what the WWE is doing you have to be different. The six sided ring was weird but it was different. Now how do we capitalize that. We should capitalize on it this way.”
“Why are we having guys write the show that were writing for WWE and then got let go? I use baseball as a theory. Why are we going to grab the manager that was 60 and 102 with a great potential team and we hire him to manage our team when we could get somebody that was better? I believe that hurt them. Jim Cornette said you only get that shot to make that first impression and then you’re done. I believe it’s so true. I think that’s what’s hurt them. Coca Cola is always going to be the name brand but there is room for Pepsi and RC and any other soda. WWE is always going to be that name brand but there is room. You just gotta be different. We’re different. Ring of Honor is different. NXT is different from WWE. There has got to be alternatives because if you don’t and there is nothing different about the product why wouldn’t you just wait to watch the product that you know?”
You can read the entire interview here.
