AEW announcer and Senior Advisor “Good Ole’ J.R.” Jim Ross took to an episode of his “Grilling Jr” podcast to talk about a number of topics, including why he wasn’t part of the WWE creative team.
Ross said, “No, I wasn’t forced to do anything. I like writing TV. I like creating. But I also had a full-time job as the head of talent relations, managing a multi-million dollar budget and trying to keep the animals happy and fed and all that good stuff. So I think that that would have been too much. That would have been too much for me. I needed to be able to do that job, and focus on that job. The worst thing that can happen — one of the worst things that could happen — is [for] a talent to call you. And say for example, I was in another meeting. I know that talents get, when you don’t call them right back they think something’s wrong. They’re very paranoid by nature. So I learned that early on, so I didn’t need to be sitting in a meeting talking about segment seven when some talents call. And they never call you to tell you or ask how you’re doing. They call you because they need something. And it’s usually money or– cash or creative. Same s**t that causes guys to stay or to leave, cash and-or creative. So I helped them. They run stuff by me to see what my take would be on it, things like that. Which I didn’t mind helping them out, but I just didn’t have the time.”
On WWE trying to make Kurt Angle a babyface when he first started in WWE:
“Hard to say [if Angle believed in the role]. Usually you had a clean-looking babyface in that era, in the Attitude Era, he’s gonna get booed anyway. So I thought it was inevitable that he would be a heel. I didn’t know how good a heel he would become. He wasn’t just good at being a heel; he was great at being a heel. Because it allowed him to be his more natural self. And you know, Kurt’s a funny guy off the camera. Sometimes you don’t want to take him seriously. Sometimes he’s very serious, but he thinks he might be working with you a little bit. He’s just multi-talented.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
