America’s greatest tennis hero is a pro-wrestling manager
The U.S. Open has recently concluded here in New York. It is one of the tennis world’s grand slam tournaments and makes dreams come true for thousands of fans. Tennis discovers new heroes and heroines and celebrates the champions crowned on the court of Arthur Ashe stadium.
Despite being exposed to tennis on a grand scale every year, I never think of a tennis player when I see a tennis racket. I think of Jim Cornette.
Jim Cornette is a professional wrestling personality who has been an inside player at the top of the pro-wrestling world for decades. I became a fan of Cornette’s watching wrestling on TV as a kid in the 1980s. Cornette was a terrific heel (bad guy) manager, and his character was that of a spoiled rich kid who brazenly bragged about the support he got from his momma. His principal prop was the ubiquitous tennis racket he always carried.
The tennis racket in Cornette’s hand was not just a totem of perpetual un-earned wealth that flaunted his status above the rank-and-file working-class wrestling fans, it was also a constant threat of illicit violence, and Cornette didn’t hesitate to use it against opponents of his wrestlers.
Cornette, like other great heels of his day like Rowdy Roddy Piper (my personal Greatest of All Time), got audiences to hate him passionately. When Cornette was eventually smacked down by one of the baby faces (good guy wrestlers), the crowd cheered loudly. Cornette made being hated look cool, and wrestling fans love him for it.
In addition to his career as a wrestling manager, Cornette served as a promoter and creative director, working behind the scenes during some of the most historic events of pro-wrestling history. He still has a hand in the wrestling world, and hosts podcasts.
As a commentator, Cornette combines a folksy Southern persona with a razor-sharp wit, and levels devastating criticism with an inside knowledge of pro-wresting that would shame most fans.
Pro-wrestling was born from the world of the traveling carnival circuit, and retains a patina of carney culture. Fans are “marks” and wrestlers stay in character by “keeping kayfabe.” A truthful interview or a real fight is a “shoot.” Despite the millions of dollars spent on production values of today’s top wrestling promotions, wrestling has never party with the shifty underworld of the carney life.
Almost every behind-the-scenes documentary about pro wrestling involves shady business deals, rampant substance abuse, broken bodies and early death.
Cornette serves as both pro-wrestling’s greatest source of inside insight while being one its most stalwart defenders. He lets us in on how the sausage is made, while also advocating for its more old-school customs and traditions. He has little patience for the tabloid, lowest-common-denominator approach that became popular a few decades ago.
Cornette will not hold back if he sees something wrong, and some of his real-life feuds have become more famous than any scripted in-ring storyline. Do an internet search for “Jim Cornette shoots on…” and you’ll find a trove of strong opinions dished out with well-said sarcastic aplomb.
Jim Cornette continues to be a great asset to pro-wrestling, and because of the boundless joy he brought to fans as a classic bad guy, the tennis racket will always mean Jim Cornette to me.
The U.S. Open is a cancer on New York City
I drove to the New York Hall of Science with my children and found the usual driveway to the parking lot barricaded. A woman wearing the uniform of a U.S. Open worker stood there. There was no reason for her to be there. The Hall of Science has no tennis courts.
She quickly waved through a hotel shuttle bus but then blocked our van.
“Do you have a membership here, sir?” she asked me. I informed her that I did.
“Then you’re technically behind this guy,” she motioned to a man with car by the curb. “We’re waiting for spaces to open up. We only have 25 spots today.” I’m not sure who the ‘we’ was in this equation. “You can wait behind this gentleman or you can try street parking.” She offered to hold my place in line if I wanted to try driving around to find street parking first. Knowing the area, I could tell that was a lost cause.
The woman was exceedingly polite, as polite as one can be while telling someone that you’re getting paid to help screw people out of a trip to the science museum so pampered jerks can pay to watch tennis. I told her we would be moving on and drove away, having to explain to my kids that the U.S. Open had just cost us a trip to the science museum.
I sent an inquiry to the Hall of Science asking how this could happen, but have so far received no response. The administration there may not have had a choice and had its hand forced by the city. Last year we discovered the city using public park land as paid parking lots for the tournament.
No New Yorker who comes in contact with the U.S. Open or its fans needs another reason to hate the U.S. open. Sure, it brings in lots of money to the city, but so does selling heroin. At least heroin eventually kills the people stupid enough to use it; U.S. Open fans don’t die off at a fast enough rate.
For 7 train commuters or neighbors of the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, the Open is the most miserable time of the year. The train is filled with tennis fans that are clueless, without any sense of their being among others. Oblivious to the basic courtesies required of city dwellers, the subway is a big joke to them, other passengers who need the train to get home from work are lucky to be witness to their charming afternoon of slumming.
The tennis fans that clog our city are Exhibit A of the decline of Western civilization, the well-heeled and soft-minded excreta of a decadent and depraved society. These obnoxious Eloi offer nothing redeeming beyond commerce, and exude only ignorance and weakness in everything that they do.
Perhaps I am painting the Open and its fans with too broad a brush. I know several people who are great human beings who are true tennis fans and make it a tradition to attend the Open. The tennis center’s centerpiece stadium is named for Arthur Ashe, who set the gold standard for how professional athletes ought to be.
But most of the tennis fans who come to the open are not like the few good eggs that I know. It’s a time of year where rich jerks come to town and the city is more than happy to extend a big middle finger to the working people who actually live here. In short: the U.S. Open represents the antithesis of all that is good about our city and is potent refinement of the worst contemporary society has to offer.
Perhaps the answer is some good old fashion capitalism, such as selling tennis fans tickets to the VIP 7 train cars that don’t exist. I would like to adopt a temperamental Rottweiler so I can name it “Serena Williams” and charge people $100 dollars for a special VIP lounge meet and greet (the VIP lounge will be a cardboard box behind a White Castle—I shall feast like a king).
If the powers that be want to flood our city with the dregs of the pampered class, the rest of us can make a quick buck sheering these sheep. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Either way, it will be over soon, but not soon enough.
The U.S. Open is Dumb and Depressing
The U.S. Open is getting underway not far from where I live in Queens, and it means that life for some subway commuters is going to get more difficult for the next few weeks.
There’s not much of a reason to watch tennis except to gawk at women in short skirts, and you can do that anywhere for free. I’m sure for fans of the sport in New York, the Open is a great opportunity to see some great masters of the game up close, but it’s not an interesting enough game for the price you pay. You can watch it on TV for free.
What the U.S. Open does for the many riders of the 7 train is flood our already overburdened subway with gaggles of U.S. Open attendees who do not know how to ride the subway.
I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Riding a subway is easy. How can someone mess that up?’ Well, they manage. The tennis fans headed to the U.S. Open are easy to spot on the 7 train. Whereas the afternoon and evening 7 train is usually filled with haggard working people tired after a day at work and quietly waiting to get home, the tennis fans move as gaggles of cheery chatterboxes, filling the air with their inane conversations.
Tennis fans have every right to their inanity of course, but they are thoroughly unversed in the concepts of being courteous to others in a public space. Riding the subway is a quaint slumming experience for them, and their mannerisms betray them at every turn. They constantly lean on subway polls or spread out over spaces meant to accommodate several people. They constantly delay trains by hesitatingly getting on and off of a subway as they are unsure if they are on the right train or at the right stop.
On Main Street, Flushing the other day, I made my way to the subway for the second leg of my three-leg commute to work. A pair of older gentlemen made their way down the sidewalk among the throngs of Asian immigrants. They wore overpriced athletic gear though they looked like they had not exercised in years. One of them was bald but had hair around the edges of his head, and that hair had been dyed the color of a tennis ball.
Something about the soul-deadening luxury of the event and the blank eyes of many of the tennis fans that makes me vow that if I ever have enough money to attend the U.S. Open, I still won’t. I’d rather not be among people who can’t figure out how to use public transportation.
Matthew Sheahan 
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