Back in 1986 at NWA Starrcade The Road Warriors defeated The Midnight Express in a Skywalkers Match, but it ended with a nasty fall from the top of the scaffold by Jim Cornette. After the match ended, Paul Ellering chased Cornette up the scaffold before he was left hanging on to it for dear life from the bottom. Big Bubba Rodgers was supposed to catch Cornette during the fall, but that didn’t happen as he was way off target with where he was standing.
Cornette suffered a severe knee injury as a result of the fall, as he landed very awkwardly on the canvas. During his recent interview with Hannibal TV, Road Warrior told his side of the story and called the event one of the ‘funniest moments in wrestling’:
“One of the funniest moments in wrestling! You got to understand the story man, it’s funny as hell. God rest his soul too, Boss Man, right? Boss Man and Hawk were like this (crosses fingers), they road together – and I say that in a sense cause those guys rode with the smokers. They loved to get high. So they got high the night before the Scaffold match. Boss Man got high as a kite. Nobody could tell because he had sunglasses on. So I’m holding on to Cornette, and I give Cornette props, he’s afraid of heights. Definitely afraid, he doesn’t fly. He drives everywhere or takes a train. He holds onto the Scaffold and I say ‘Jimmy you got it?’ He says ‘Yeah, I got it.’
“I told Boss Man, I yell down and go ‘Hey, you ready?’ I’m thinking ‘How is Boss Man going to catch Cornette?’ If he does catch him, Cornette is like a 250-pound sack of crap, he’s going to kill him. Then I tell Boss Man ‘You ready?’ I said ‘Okay,’ and I said ‘Go!’ Boss Man standing like this, and he’s three feet off and misses Cornette. Cornette falls and hits – both knees went ‘POP!’ like a big two-by-four, you hear them both go. He blew out both knees in that one deal. He was screaming! And Hawk and I are belly laughing on the Scaffold. He’s lying in pain, but it was so funny, you had to see Bubba standing there like this, and then staring like this watching Cornette hit. You had to be there and be involved in the match because it was so funny. We laughed our butts off at that.”
You can check out the fall here:
H/T Wrestling Inc for the transcriptions
