What's a "mark"?

[CTXRussomark]

Cornette's is one of the few podcasts I still regularly listen to having binned off the last of the Conrad ones a year or so ago.  Yeah his takes on modern wrestling are outdated and he clearly wants to hate most of it (particularly AEW) regardless of how good or bad it actually is, but his shows are incredible content from a historical perspective.  Having someone like Cornette with such a photographic memory (and/or the actual paper records in a lot of cases) who clearly just LOVES that stuff is night and day to the likes of Bischoff, Prichard etc. who are only there to whitewash history and make themselves sound like the smartest guys in the room. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

A mark is a guy that spends his last 20 dollars on crack cocaine. A mark is a guy that believes that OJ didn't do it.

First thing that came into my mind when the question was asked. 

Bravo, Sir. 

[Chili]

If Jim Cornette's podcast was just him discussing wrestling history I'd absolutely still listen to him because when he touches on those things, he's a ridiculously engaging listen because he absolutely loves it and you can feel it, but unfortunately it's drowned in his old man yells at clouds/incel bro wrestling fans slop... And Brian Last seems a right cunt.

[Supremo]

Yeah, to be fair, the only bit of Cornette’s podcast I’ve ever heard is him moaning about AEW and dropping all his rubbish nicknames. I bet whenever he’s talking about stuff from the past it’s probably class. He’s great on Dark Side of the Ring, so I assume it’s the same when he’s not going down the grifter route.

It’s the same with Pritchard. There’s a solid thirty percent of his stuff that’s absolutely fascinating, but you always have to suffer through all the anti-Meltzer bollocks. It becomes not worth it.

Bischoff and Bully Ray can unequivocally get in the bin though. No room for discussion. Used to be workers. Now marks for the grift algorithm.

Edited June 30 by Supremo

[BomberPat]

Something I always wonder about Cornette is at what point do you start to let his opinions on modern wrestling bleed into what he's saying about the past? When he speaks in absolutes about what does and doesn't "work", holds grudges against wrestlers who work a particular style, and against female wrestlers in general, what's to say those opinions don't carry over into how he views the wrestling of the past as well? How could they not?

I think he has an incredible archive, is a great storyteller, and is very good at recounting situations from when he was actually in the room, and is very good on the history of wrestling in the southern United States, but I do question his value as a historian more and more. For balance, I have the same concerns around Dave Meltzer in certain areas too.

[Chico Torres]

I think Cornette is great, but I don’t listen to most of his podcasts because despite my reputation as someone who hates modern wrestling (which is largely correct) I have no interest in hearing someone talking about things I don’t care about.

The podcasts I would recommend are the year end compilations he does that only focus on the old stuff. At the end of last year there were comps of him going through 1984, From the Files omnibus, Obituary omnibus, Guess the Program omnibus. It’s all the good parts without having to listen to reviews of AEW or WWE.

If he did a podcast that only focused on classic wrestling I would definitely be a listener but don’t want to listen him review the never ending saga of a family of mid Samoans shamelessly appropriating black culture.

To get to the reason we are talking about it, he’s definitely not a mark nor is anyone making money from wrestling (especially doing so without travel or taking bumps).

[TheScarlettChad]

I don't listen to any of them for my mental health but that British lad who has his miserable face in the thumbnail I watched one of his. He's an absolute mark. 

[Chili]

2 minutes ago, TheScarlettChad said:

I don't listen to any of them for my mental health but that British lad who has his miserable face in the thumbnail I watched one of his. He's an absolute mark. 

Oh GOD HIM. Fucking mug on him.

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, Chili said:

he's a ridiculously engaging listen 

He's fucking, sort of, fucking incapable of talking about what the fuck without fucking going round the motherfucking houses, down the fucking road to where the fuck, past some cocksucker of a motherfucker and fucking swearing a lot between every fucking word and filling the fucking blanks with fucking sayings the cocksucker has made up that having fucking unecessary fucking fucks in them for fuck knows what fucking reason, motherfucker.

The marks are the people who watch wrestling "shoot" interviews in 2026.

[The King Of Swing]

Cornette is clearly very knowledgeable about certain territories and anything he was actually involved in. 

About the only good thing I can say about him, in 2026.

I've long stopped caring about his views on modern wrestling. I just think he's a horrible person, in general. 

 

[Merzbow]

4 minutes ago, The King Of Swing said:

I just think he's a horrible person, in general.

Yeah, for someone so Anti-Trump he sure is a horrible little sexist & racist just like him.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

I listen to the historical stuff Cornette does on YouTube, that's the only bit I'm interested in from him, though I understand that he thinks Moxley is shite, proving that old adage that a stopped clock is right twice a day. 

As for who is a mark, that's easy. Anyone who takes men and women pretending to fight whilst wearing their undercrackers even remotely seriously. The people involved in wrestling are the worst and if you are carving a Mark Rushmore then Humble Hunter, Sweaty Betty Heyman, Tony Khan and Pippy Brooks are your faces. Carve some statues for the boulevard up to it of them Revival lads, Cody, Blue Lives Calloway and Eric Bischoff. 

[DavidB6937]

For me it's definitely the "hardcore" fans of just single companies and the way they behave online. The ultras or whatever the fuck they're known as.

Rushing to point out botches or taking photos of empty parts of arenas or suddenly hating a wrestler because they work somewhere else. Delving into ratings week after week after week.

To be fair, they're less 'marks' and more 'cunts'. Their pleasure is derived from making others feel shit about whatever they watch, rather than actual enjoyment in their own choices. In fact I'm not sure they even care about what they personally consume. They just want to make others suffer.

 

[The King Of Swing]

1 minute ago, DavidB6937 said:

In fact I'm not sure they even care about what they personally consume.

Definitely some truth to that, I think.

Ratings talk seems to have largely disappeared, though. Compared to a few years ago anyway.

[TheScarlettChad]

57 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

For me it's definitely the "hardcore" fans of just single companies and the way they behave online. The ultras or whatever the fuck they're known as.

Rushing to point out botches or taking photos of empty parts of arenas or suddenly hating a wrestler because they work somewhere else. Delving into ratings week after week after week.

To be fair, they're less 'marks' and more 'cunts'. Their pleasure is derived from making others feel shit about whatever they watch, rather than actual enjoyment in their own choices. In fact I'm not sure they even care about what they personally consume. They just want to make others suffer.

 

I saw some lad outside of a show in like 2022, Pre All In and Pre Clash At The Castle, in Wales, Saying without a shred of irony, "AEW is copying what WE did in 1992." referencing Summerslam 1992. "We?" What the fuck is this we business? Football fans do it too. So cringe.