Conrad’s Corner is a new weekly column written by Conrad “The Mortgage Guy” Thompson. A friend and confidant to some of wrestling’s biggest names, Conrad has become wrestling’s unofficial “Podfather,” co-hosting weekly shows with the likes of Eric Bischoff, Bruce Prichard and JBL. Every Tuesday, Conrad now brings his insider perspective to Uncrowned with a mix of unfiltered opinions, behind-the-scenes scoops and observations from across the world of professional wrestling.
Hey, hey, it’s Conrad — and I’ll start this week with some sad news. Jim Herd, World Championship Wrestling’s first executive vice president, passed away in October at age 87. Jim Herd ran the promotion from 1989 until January 1992 after Turner Broadcasting bought Jim Crockett Promotions. A top executive for Ted Turner, Herd was tasked by “Billionaire Ted” with turning WCW into a profitable business.
Advertisement
He is best remembered as the guy who fired Ric Flair after contract talks broke down in July 1991. That led to “The Nature Boy” jumping to the WWF and the earth-shattering visual of Flair appearing on WWF TV with the WCW/NWA Big Gold Belt.
History, it is said, is written by the winners. It’s also decided by those with the loudest voices.
For more than three decades, Herd’s WCW run has been the butt of jokes by guys like Flair, Dave Meltzer, Jim Cornette, and every WCW wrestler who did a “shoot interview.”
Because of his history as an executive for a company that owned 68 Pizza Hut restaurants, Jim was dubbed “the pizza guy,” totally discounting his business acumen and success he had in the St. Louis market specifically. Imo’s Pizza had dominated the market for years and the corporate juggernaut Pizza Hut couldn’t crack the market, so they hired Herd, who at the time was a Station Manager for KPLR-TV in St. Louis.
Advertisement
Herd understood the advertising business, the television business, and he was able to turn those Pizza Hut stores around financially. His success was not lost on his old friend Jack Petrik, who was now in charge of overseeing Ted Turner’s latest acquisition, Jim Crockett Promotions, which was to be renamed WCW.
Petrick didn’t hire Herd to “fix” wrestling storylines, he was brought in as a business executive to turn Crockett’s red ink into black ink.
Under Herd, WCW secured a Coors beer sponsorship. I can’t tell you how impressive that was, especially 35 years ago. For years, Vince McMahon considered a beer sponsorship to be a “holy grail” advertising category that would work as a gateway to other advertisers. It took WWE until 2020 to announce its first official beer sponsorship.
May 25, 1990: Jim Herd, Ted Turner and El Gigante pose for a photo in Atlanta, Georgia.
(WWE via Getty Images)
Herd did it in his first calendar year with WCW, alongside wrestling’s first-ever “shoe deal,” (even if it was Roos). Herd tried many sponsor or brand “activations,” like giving Brad Armstrong the “Candy Man” persona to land Hershey chocolate.
Advertisement
Jim Crockett Promotions never had trading cards or action figures. Herd got both for WCW.
Those deals mattered to the bottom line for Turner’s organization.
And I’ll also defend Mr. Herd on the creative side.
On Jim Herd’s watch, Big Van Vader, the Great Muta, Scott Steiner and Terry Funk all came into WCW. Everyone’s favorite trilogy in the history of wrestling, Steamboat vs. Flair from 1989, was also on Jim Herd’s watch. Herd can get credit for Sting’s first title win at Great American Bash 1990 as well.
History often forgets all of these “wins” when retelling Herd’s story. All I’m merely suggesting we should take the good with the bad.
Advertisement
Everyone in wrestling has had fun with Herd’s idea about introducing a tag-team of “hunchbacks,” with the asinine idea that their imagined disfigurement would make them impossible to pin. (No, really.)
Nobody loved the idea of renaming Ric Flair “Spartacus” or presenting Kevin Nash as “Oz,” as a way to promote Turner’s new investment into old films, either.
But why do we judge Jim Herd purely on his stupidest ideas, including those which never saw the light of day, like Spartacus or the hunchbacks?
We don’t judge Vince McMahon’s ability as a booker solely on his idea to cast himself as the father of his own daughter’s baby. (Mercifully, he was talked out of it, like Herd was with the hunchbacks.) We don’t dismiss all the great storylines Vince produced purely because, as Bruce Prichard recalled, the WWF considered bringing in literal murderer O.J. Simpson to wrestle Roddy Piper at WrestleMania XII.
Ric Flair’s trilogy against Ricky Steamboat came under Jim Herd’s watch.
(WWE via Getty Images)
Vince McMahon once wrestled “God” on pay-per-view, had Triple H pretend to have sex with a corpse in a casket, and so many other dreadful ideas that made air. Every wrestling writer or booker has their share of crappy ideas — and Herd never called himself a booker in the first place.
Advertisement
Seeing as I am sort of writing the first draft of Jim’s obituary, I want to also address the biggest knock against his WCW run: He fired Ric Flair.
Most people know Ric was a dear friend before he became my father-in-law. Like most wrestling fans my age, I was a huge Ric Flair fan, but a promoter not seeing eye to eye with their top star is hardly a situation unique to Herd and Flair. McMahon’s rocky relationship with Hulk Hogan comes to mind.
Jim Herd was hired to stop WCW losing money. As much as we don’t love the way it reads, it’s the truth that WCW never turned a profit with Ric Flair as their top star. Crockett lost so much money he had to sell and then WCW lost money every single year, no matter who was in charge, until another “non-wrestling guy” — Eric Bischoff — took over.
Herd’s primary responsibility was to find the black ink. He tried Sting, he tried Flair as a babyface, he tried Luger, and nothing ever worked. When those attempts failed, Herd moved on into the casino business.
Advertisement
I tracked him down several years ago, and he explained he never looked back on wrestling because it stopped being fun for him. WCW was simply a job he took to advance up the Turner corporate ladder. He did his best and then moved on.
Let me ask you this: What was your favorite part of Ole Anderson’s run as booker or Bill Watts’ time running WCW? I think history should be a little kinder to Herd’s reign. We enjoyed plenty of great moments and matches on his watch, and in a lot of ways he was ahead of the curve when it came to advertising in the wrestling space.
Rest in peace, Mr. Herd.
From what I’m hearing, April 9, 10 and 11 are the dates being pencilled in for WrestleMania weekend in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia next year.
Advertisement
WrestleMania 43 will be the first WrestleMania ever held outside North America, with WWE taking its biggest show of the year to the capital of the Kingdom in a deal believed to be worth well in excess of $100 million.
WWE has yet to officially confirm the dates, but April 10 and 11 are expected to be the two nights of WrestleMania itself.
Last weekend, WWE went ahead with its annual Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia despite the ongoing threat of missile and drone attacks from the Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen. With Saudi Arabia increasingly finding itself caught up in the wider conflict in the Middle East, there were understandable concerns about the safety of everyone involved. Hopefully, the fighting will come to an end soon, and next year’s historic WrestleMania can take place without anyone having to worry about their safety.
I’m so happy for Ethan Page. Becoming the Intercontinental Champion is still a huge accomplishment in WWE and oftentimes creates more main event opportunities on the other side of the reign.
Advertisement
Page is a talented guy who has worked very hard for a long time. After less-than-friendly departures from TNA and AEW, his WWE run felt like it would be make-or-break for his career.
I’m so glad he was able to bet on himself and win.
On the flip side of that, we must talk about Chad Gable, who Page beat for the belt. Earlier this year, everyone in the industry was discussing whether or not Chad Gable might be the best professional wrestler in the world.
His heel run as El Grande Americano was incredible, as was the feud and eventual unmasking in AAA.
But now that his reign as I-C champ is over, all I know is it was more fun watching him as a heel.
Chad Gable and Ethan Page have lit up the Intercontinental title scene.
(WWE via Getty Images)
I can reveal that self-proclaimed “free speech guy” Dana White had his lawyers send a cease-and-desist letter to a wrestling promotion spoofing his Power Slap events.
Advertisement
In September, indie pro-wrestling league Lingerie Fighting Championships (think an entire show based around Attitude Era bra-and-panty matches) announced “Power Spank,” a 20-minute opening segment where their female performers slapped each other’s buttocks in a parody of Dana’s slapping league.
Introducing the segment to live fans in Florida last month, LFC President and MC Jared “Mister” St. Laurent said, “There’s a lot of talk about CTE in sports. Do you want to see brains shaking … or asses shaking?”
The sold-out crowd roared back “asses” and then howled and giggled through the parody, which was won by an exotic dancer known as “Bebe.”
I guess Dana didn’t find it funny.
Advertisement
LFC got the letter last week, and CEO Shaun Donnelly had this to say:
“Satire and parody have a long, protected place in American expression, and that applies to combat sports entertainment as much as anything else.
“We will not be bullied into abandoning protected speech. We will defend our right, and the right of every American, to free speech, and if that takes us to the Supreme Court, we are prepared to go.”
LFC may not be my thing, but if I had to pick one, I’d rather see Spank versus Slap.
I’m not saying Power Spank will have more social media followers than Manchester United or Real Madrid, though. Because who’d make a wild claim like that?
I don’t mind getting heat for this — WWE needs to really pull the trigger on Logan Paul in 2027.
Logan Paul has been a central player in The Vision’s 2026’s storyline.
(WWE via Getty Images)
He can put on good matches, he can talk, he can make people hate him, and “Logan Paul, WWE Champion” or even “WrestleMania main-eventer” courts more mainstream attention than anyone on the roster.
Advertisement
If a talent brings in more eyeballs and then can deliver a good to great match … shouldn’t they automatically be considered for the main events? Isn’t that the entire point of a promotion?
Plus, Paul has nuclear heat as a heel. In the “Raw” after WrestleMania this year, no one in the T-Mobile Arena could hear a word he said on the mic, so lustily was he booed. That doesn’t quite come across on TV because of the microphone, but I know even Paul Heyman was taken aback by the sheer level of Logan Paul’s heel heat.
If he wins a world title belt, the fans will foam at the mouth and will tune in and buy a ticket to see someone, anyone, pin him and get the title back off him.
His critics in the IWC argue: “He only gets heat because people hate the real-life Logan Paul.”
Advertisement
But I think that’s the point, isn’t it?
He’s playing himself, or at least who we think he is … a too-rich, too-cocky son of a b**** who’s been handed a lot of success and gotten opportunities others have to work a lifetime for.
WWE has gotten it right on Logan Paul so far. I think next year they should go all in.
WWE’s never-ending effort to counter-program AEW amuses me.
Last Wednesday was another edition of the “Wednesday Night War,” where WWE had CM Punk, John Cena and Cody Rhodes appear on NXT. It was no coincidence that AEW was presenting a special with double cage matches called “Blood and Guts.”
Advertisement
I guess the humor comes with WWE’s insistence that they can have it both ways, sometimes going to enormous effort to counter-program AEW (see WWE running AAA Ola de Calor and NXT Heatwave against AEW All In at Wembley on Aug. 30) while also trying to insist they don’t see AEW as competition.
Former WWE boss Vince McMahon had a mantra: “Never let ’em see you sell,” meaning never let your enemies see you are worried about them.
Sending Punk, Cena and Rhodes to NXT seemed like a whole lot of “selling” to me, brother. I’m legitimately curious why anyone at WWE was concerned with the ratings of a one-off AEW Wednesday night special, but here we are.
For what it’s worth, I think I’m ready for AEW to retire the “Blood and Guts” cage concept for a while. I’m glad folks seemed to enjoy it, but I was not one of them. The performers all worked hard and there was a lot of crazy and dangerous innovation.
Advertisement
But, the women’s match seemed awfully thrown together from a storyline perspective, many of the stunts just seemed to be stunts for the sake of stunts, and I’m not sure what else they could possibly do for the next one. I’d rather see this concept as a rarely used, “final chapter” in a long-running feud to be blown off as a pay-per-view main event.
This year’s women’s match felt like an obligation that existed merely because the men had one. I want the violence to matter rather than it being violence for the sake of violence.
Mick Foley’s Hell in a Cell moment was celebrated for more than 25 years, but Darby Allin’s fall from the cage after the match will be long forgotten in under 25 weeks.
That’s not Darby’s fault either. AEW needed more patience, storytelling, and a pay-per-view to make Blood and Guts feel as special.
I am somehow more excited for AEW’s pay-per-view main event this Saturday — Will Ospreay defending his AEW World Title against Kyle Fletcher at Full Gear — than I was for Omega vs. Ospreay at All In.
Advertisement
Kyle Fletcher told me on “What Happened When with Tony Schiavone” that this Saturday is the biggest match of his life. I think everyone reading this would agree that Kyle Fletcher is going to be AEW World Champion someday, but will it be Saturday?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
