Jim Cornette Resigns From National Wrestling Alliance After Making Offensive Remark on Commentary

Jim Cornette has left his position as a commentator for the National Wrestling Alliance after making a racist remark while commentating on a match.

@TheJimCornette/Twitter

Longtime wrestling personality Jim Cornette has resigned from his position as a commentator with the National Wrestling Alliance after he made an offensive remark while calling a match on the episode of “NWA Powerrr” that aired on Tuesday night. 

“Trevor Murdoch is mad, bad and dangerous,” Cornette said during a match between Murdoch and Nick Aldis. “He’s the only man I know that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia.”

Cornette, 58, was a fixture on NWA television in the ’80s, contributing behind the scenes before becoming an on-screen manager. In his role as the manager for the Midnight Express tag team, Cornette made the same comment about Ethiopia and fried chicken in 1988. 

“As an announcer on the November 19th edition of NWA Power, Jim made remarks during a singles match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch that were both offensive and do not meet the high standards of decency and good faith of the National Wrestling Alliance,” the NWA said in a statement. 

“To ensure that such an error can never happen again, we've established new procedures of review for all NWA programming going forward.

“We sincerely regret our failure in this regard.”

NWA Powerrr is a throwback to the NWA’s studio television shows of the 1970s and ’80s. It is filmed in front of a live audience at the Georgia Public Broadcasting Studios in Atlanta and airs at a later date after editing. Cornette’s comment was not removed in the initial editing process. 

The NWA issued a statement after the show originally aired on its YouTube channel apologizing for the comment and pulled the original video. It was later replaced with a new video that did not include the offensive remark.

On tonight's episode of NWA Powerr airing on November 19th 2019, one of our talents made comments which some viewers found offensive. We deeply regret the error and apologize.

We have temporarily taken the program down while we correct this error.

— Dave Lagana (@Lagana) November 20, 2019

Cornette is no stranger to controversy. In May, he used homophobic and transphobic terms to refer to gay wrestler Sonny Kiss of AEW. Earlier this week he called AEW’s Emi Sakura, who is Japanese, a “fat, dumpy, middle-aged, Margaret Cho-looking, f---ing outlaw indie girl wrestler from Japan.” After Cornette’s comments Tuesday night, independent wrestler Arik Cannon resurfaced an audio clip of Cornette repeatedly using the n-word.