This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video by clicking Here.
What most know about Jim's career pre-WCW is that he at one time was a manager at Pizza Hut, but he also had experience in the television industry, being a former production executive for KPLR-TV in St. Louis. This was the same channel that aired 'Wrestling at the Chase', which ran on the channel for twenty four years, though it's not clear if Herd had anything to do with that product. Likely due to this experience and also a connection to a Turner executive, Herd was hired by Turner Broadcasting and placed in charge of WCW in January of 1989.
Creative or crazy?
Chances are if've heard of Jim, you've mostly heard bad stories about him. He's not exactly the most popular executive amongst wrestlers who worked for him, and for a few very good reasons. His lasting reputation is that he seemed to have not a lot of product knowlege, and didn't seem willing to learn any, but still wanted to contribute ideas. He was credited with such ideas as a tag team of wrestling hunchbacks, who could never be pinned as both of their shoulders were never on the mat together. Herd apparently thought that this would make the team unbeatable, until it had to be explained to him that there are in fact, other ways to win a wrestling match. This is perhaps indicative of the level of wrestling knowlege we're dealing with. That idea was quickly rejected by the booking committee who knew much better, but occasionally one of Herd's daft ideas would make it to the ring. Introducing the Ding Dongs, played by Greg Evans and Richard Sartain who had previously worked as the Rock n Roll Rebels.The team would come running out wearing awful orange costumes, thankfully with masks so they couldn't be identified, billed from Belleville USA, of which there actually is one in Illinois. To make things worse they would be wearing bells on their wrists and ankles, and would have a bell in the corner that they would ring to fire themselves up. To be fair to them, neither Evans or Satrain look to be bad wrestlers in the slightest, but the gimmick wouldn't ring in much success. As best I can tell Jim Herds reason for this ridiculous gimmick was he was trying to come up with wacky characters that kids would love, because thats what he saw the WWE doing with acts like the Bushwackers. Unfortunately though Herd seemed to be taking the wrong lessons from how WWE gained its national audience, as the sillier gimmicks didn't last long there either.
One unfortunate wrestler who personified not one but two of Herds bad ideas was Brad Armstrong, brother of Brian Armstrong better known as the Road Dogg. In September 1990 Brad would be repackaged as the Candyman, wearing candy can coloured tights and throwing sweets out to the crowd on his way to the ring. Years later Herd claimed that the reasoning behind this gimmick was not just to appeal to children, but also to try and get a brand deal with Hershey which fell through. Later on near the end of Herd's time in WCW, Brad would be given a new costume to wear. A new, suspiciously familiar costume, recoloured to match the WCW logo of the time. Yes, Brad would be bitten by a radioactive shitty idea, and would become Arachnaman, complete with silly string shooting from his hands. Maybe a young Serpentico might have seen this, who would have been seven years old at the time. As you might well imagine, Marvel comic's super legal team got involved fairly quickly and the Arachnaman gimmick was squashed. If you're going to infringe on Marvel's trademarks, you might as present it well, like when the AWA's Terry Boulder became 'The Incredible Hulk Hogan". They billed Arachnaman from Web City, not even New York!
Speaking of brand deals, Jim was also responsible for another infamous brand deal with a sneaker brand Roos, now known as KangaROOS. I'd genuinely never heard of these before making this video, and I don't know how I feel about shoes with pockets but thats neither here nor there... According to Jim Cornette in one of his dozens of shoot interviews where he talks about Herd, Jim arranged for the WCW wrestlers to work their matches wearing Roos', but the wrestlers hated this so the edict was quickly removed. There are also numerous adverts that are still with us through the magic of YouTube that feature various WCW stars promoting the sneakers with the tagline "shoes for your feet, pockets for your stuff" that very much sounds like it came from an SNL sketch, I can even hear it being said in Phil Hartmans voice.
I can't talk about Jim Herds creative input without talking about one of the craziest idea that has been attributed to him. It seems like he and one Ric Flair never really got a long, and it also seemed like Herd didn't care much for sticking with established gimmicks that had worked for years, like Flair had at the time. It has been claimed for many years by Ric himself that Jim once pitched an idea for Ric Flair to trade his suave suits and long blonde locks, and to become a Roman gladiator, now going by the name Spartacus. Clearly this was never going to actually happen, and in a 2020 interview with Conrad Thompson, Herd would deny that this was ever actually pitched, and that many silly ideas would be thrown into meetings, but many were tongue in cheek and not meant to be serious suggestions, or thats what he implied at least. Jim also noted that the idea came from Turner buying a backlog of black and white movies and colourising them. It was felt that there was a need to cross promote these movies, and this may have been where the Spartacus idea came from. There is some weight to this given Tony Schiovone's explanation of Robocop being in WCW later on was that there was pressure from Turner to co-promote with the release of Robocop 2.
Herding Jim's enemies
As I mentioned earlier, Jim wasn't much popular with many wrestlers, and if the stories are true, he didn't do much to change that. One such wrestler that hated Herd is a man who is known to hold a grudge or two, The Franchise Shane Douglas. In a 2018 shoot interview Shane told a story about once meeting Herd in his Atlanta office. Shane claimed that Jim talked down to him the entire time, and at one point handed him a document while saying "you probably won't understand this just being a wrestler." Shane, with his two Masters degrees in education, wasn't thrilled by this comment, and claims not only to have understood the document which included rating information for various other wrestling shows, but he understood it better than Herd.
Another of Herds more famous enemies was Jim Cornette, who as you can probably imagine has talked endlessly about Herd over the years. In fact, he has done entire shoot interviews about the period of his career where he worked for Herd, I recommend in particular his Timeline: 1989 interview by Kayfabe Commentaries. If I went through Cornette's grievances with Jim Herd we'd be here all day, and Jim tells it all way better himself but I'll share this one story. Having left WCW in October 1990, one year before Herd would leave, Jim upon hearing about how bad WCW's business had gotten would be inspired to send Jim a funeral wreath of black roses, with a card that read "my deepest sympathies for the death of your wrestling promotion". According to Cornette Herd was fuming when he received the wreath, and placed it on the desk of Jim Ross, who worked in the WCW offices at the time.
Sorry for teasing you at the start, but now we get to Herd biggest blunder of all, managing to get the WCW World championship into the hands of his competition. Flair and Herds feud resulted mainly from Ric Flair being the WCW booker at the time, and Herd constantly wanting to get involved and change things. In 1991 Ric would finally have enough to the point of quitting the company, while he was the International champion as it was then called. In Jim Cornette's Timeline 1990 interview with Kayfabe Commentaries, Jim actually shows a copy of the actual resignation letter that Flair sent. Back in those days, in order to be the NWA world champion, which is what the International title upheld the lineage of, the new champion was required to pay a deposit of $25,000, which would be repaid back to the champion upon losing the belt. This was essentially to keep said champion responsible and to make sure they made all required bookings, as any money lost by a promoter would be repaid to them from the deposit. When Ric left WCW, he claimed that for whatever reason the deposit wasn't returned to him, so he kept possession of the belt. When Ric arrived in WWE in September 91 he considered the belt his, and as a way of sticking it to Jim Herd, he made the Prime Time appearance with the belt, claiming to be the 'real Worlds champion".
Much like with Marvel and Arachnaman earlier, WCW and Turners legal team got involved pretty quickly. Going forward WWE would not be allowed to use the belt, so they would have Flair come out with a modified tag team title belt, and they would blur it out in the edit to make it look like Flair was still using the WCW belt. Flair claimed that when he agreed to send the belt back once WCW paid him the deposit, but Herd refused. However not long after this incident in January 1992 Jim Herd would resign from Turner Broadcasting, and Ric Flair would return a month later. Upon his return, Ric claimed in a 2004 WWE Interview that he was paid the deposit plus interest.
In all my years of listening to and reading interviews with wrestlers, I don't remember ever hearing a good thing said about Jim Herd. He was clearly a capable business man to have reached such a high corporate level, but clearly didn't understand enough about the wrestling business, and yet tried to influence it anyway. As I mentioned earlier at the age of 88 years old, Jim Herd gave his first interview in decades to Conrad Thompson on his Ad Free Shows platform. I won't share too much from that interview given that it's behind a paywall, but Herd claims that his biggest achievements that he brought to WCW were improvements to the visual presentation of the shows such as better entrance sets, pyro and ramps.
In the end Jim Herd is one of those people that history doesn't remember kindly, but it's worth noting that he was the first in a line of WCW EVP's who failed to turn the company's fortunes. On Herd's watch came the classic Flair/Steamboat trilogy, the ascension of Sting and many more legendary talents, and yet WCW was still struggling. One thing you can't deny though is that Jim was an influential figure in pro wrestling going into the 90's, one who now in his 90's is still talked about today.
Sources used for this script:
Prime Time debut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWUx-iuvpOQ
ding dongs debut (Clash 7): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHcMK3a4Vj8
Shane Douglas on Jim Herd: https://m.facebook.com/TheHannibalTV/videos/shane-douglas-on-jim-herds-wcw-regime/441552703743887/
Herd denies Spartacus: https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/jim-herd-we-never-considered-changing-ric-flair-s-name-spartacus
Cornette funeral wreath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_6yjSD8lLk
Ric Flair interview re Herd: http://www.mediaman.com.au/interviews/flair_silvervision.html
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