Renee Young, Paige Shoot Down Idea of Jim Cornette Appearing on WWE Backstage

Jim Cornette may have been in the headlines this week, but the crew over at WWE Backstage want nothing to do with him. On Tuesday the National Wrestling Alliance pulled and edited the latest episode of NWA Power after fans pointed out a racist comment Cornette made while on commentary during a match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch. The following morning the promotion announced that Cornette had resigned from his position at the company. Cornette did not issue an apology along with his resignation, instead deciding to promote the next episode of his podcast where he would address the issue. One of Cornette fan’s on Twitter pushed for the idea for him to appear on WWE Backstage over on Fox Sports 1, which was quickly shot down by both Renee Young and Paige.

“Lol hard no over here bud,” Young wrote.

“Effective immediately: Jim Cornette has resigned from the National Wrestling Alliance,” the NWA’s press release read. “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. 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.”

Aldis released his own statement on the issue.

“This is in no way speaking on behalf of the NWA, I am absolutely just speaking for myself: I thought the comment was in poor taste and unnecessary. I totally understand why it caused many to be upset,” Aldis wrote. “It was a lack of judgement or sensitivity. I have worked really hard along wiht many others on this team to make this brand mean something again and this is not how I want the NWA to be trending.”

This week’s episode of WWE Backstage featured the debut of CM Punk as a member of the analyst panel. The former WWE Champion didn’t hold back his thoughts on WWE’s current product.

“I think the product is the same as when I left it,” Punk said. “Wrestling could be so much better, it could be so much more. Obviously there’s a reason myself, yourself, everybody who puts on a pair of boots fell in love with professional wrestling. And regardless of what I think of the product now, the opinion is the same as when I was there.

“Stuff is overproduced, stuff’s micromanaged. I think the best characters, the people that fans love the most throughout all of wrestling are the characters that they get to figure stuff out themselves instead of being told what to do by somebody who’ve never done anything, never been anywhere. ‘never drew money, brother.’ So I think there’s a lot wrong with it, but I see a lot of bright spots.”