Jim Ross and Conrad Thompson recently discussed the 1996 King of the Ring tournament on “Grillin JR.” The tournament was won by Steve Austin that year but the original plan had been for Hunter Hearst Helmsley to come out on top. The result is said to have been changed after Triple H took part in the Curtain Call at Madison Square Garden.
JR and Conrad discussed the infamous curtain call on the podcast.
“Everybody looks at things differently. I thought it was a lack of institutional control quite frankly,” said JR. “The guys shouldn’t have done it, in my view. But they loved each other so much, they had to say goodbye, it was the Garden, it was bulls**t. That’s what it was.”
JR continued to say that the Kliq wanted to show their defiance through their actions at Madison Square Garden that night.
“They’re so indebted to each other, they are such great friends, I wonder how often they talk now? So my point is, was it really that big of a deal? Or was it just for them to show their deviance? That they could do what they wanted, when they wanted, because of who (they) were. And you got to blame Vince for a lot of that because he let a lot of that s**t slip by.”
JR continued to say that Vince was possibly too talent-friendly at the time. This may have been because the company was losing talent to WCW during this period.
“That’s what they wanted to do and Vince was going to support those guys. Sometimes bookers, owners, whatever, can be too gracious in their quest to be talent friendly. I thought that was an example of that.”
Finally, JR said that he felt the curtain call was selfish and other wrestlers at the time felt similarly.
“I thought that thing in the Garden was kind of selfish. We’re going to defy tradition, we’re going to turn our back on kayfabe in this world’s most famous arena because we want to and we can and a lot of the other guys that I heard from were not happy about it.”
