"Grilling JR"

[VIDEO] Before Jim Ross began a new podcast with Conrad Thompson  - who also among other wrestling themed podcasts has one with longtime pro-wrestling producer Bruce Prichard called Something to Wrestle - I was treated to a few editions of The Ross Report. It helped me realize the extent of Jim Ross' experiences in pro wrestling and not just as a play-by-play man, also realize that for many years in the WWF he was an executive in charge of talent relations helping to find the newest stars for the business. Ross had been a busy man for sure.

Of course, Ross has left WWE last month to remain in the game as while he was under contract and paid by WWE he was largely underutilized. He also noted in the above video his relationship with his wife Jan who sadly passed away over two years ago. It sounds as if he was dating her while he was working for Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling. He discusses his time with them and how he found himself later working with the World Wrestling Federation err WWE.

It's fascinating to hear his observations of how WCW operated under the management of the Tuner corporate structure. He saw that there was in his words a cancer that proved to be terminal and the result was WCW's sale to Vince McMahon's WWE in 2001. The issues were ongoing were WCW couldn't survive the Turner company's acquisition by Time Warner.

However the irony or ironies is that as All Elite Wrestling (AEW) is currently negotiating at TV deal wrestling could return to either or both Turner channels TBS & TNT which were the channels where WCW programming had formerly been broadcast. And an even more interesting irony is that Ross who had been the voice of WCW when I first started watching wrestling will be likely by the voice of AEW once their weekly TV begins to air later this year.