The WCW Booker Who Was The Most Hated In History
For fans of WCW, the name Jim Herd is met with open mockery and absolute disgust. There have been many bad bookers in the history of WCW, could it be that Jim Herd is the worst of the worst?
Jim Herd did not come from a wrestling background, he was in fact an executive at Pizza Hut. The only reason Herd got the job as WCW Executive Vice President was because he was once a TV station manager in St. Louis which just so happened to air pro wrestling. Herd didn’t have any real knowledge of the business.
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Herd established a booking committee to assist him with ideas. This booking committee was led by Dusty Rhodes and also included Ric Flair, Jim Cornette, Kevin Sullivan, and Ole Anderson all with varying levels of creative control. Ultimately, however, Jim Herd was the guy making all the decisions when it came to angles, storylines, and gimmicks.
So how does a wrestling show look when the person running the creative side of the business doesn’t have a creative bone in his body?
Jim Herd’s Creative Vision
Seeing the success of the more child-friendly WWF at the time, Jim Herd launched a creative initiative to make WCW more family-friendly, a choice that would piss off the diehard NWA fans. One of his big ideas was a tag team called the Ding Dongs from Belleville… They were a tag team who wore orange jumpsuits with tiny little bells attached to them. If the name wasn’t bad enough, during the match, these little bells would inevitably fall off the jumpsuits, littering the ring all the while the tag partner in the corner would ring a giant bell to hype up his partner. Herd expected a huge reaction for the Ding Dongs, but the crowd openly booed the tag team, while JR on commentary sounded noticeably embarrassed. In 1989, the Pro Wrestling Observer awarded them the title of "Worst Gimmick.”
Not done with tag teams, Herd pitched another team named The Hunchbacks. I could try to describe this one but I think Jim Cornette’s explanation from his podcast covers pretty much everything.
“The best stupid idea that Jim Herd had when he wanted to introduce the team of the Hunchbacks. So, Jim Herd goes off on this ten-minute soliloquy of how he has come up with the greatest idea for a tag team ever, the Hunchbacks. ‘They got the big hump on their back, you know, and ya' get ‘em in there and ya' can't pin ‘em, because they got the hump on their back. So, they are an unbeatable tag team and that's how we'll sell ‘em, you can't beat these guys, because they've got humps on their backs.' He was deadly serious about this. Ole, bless him, wrestling's cantankerous old man. He says, ‘All right, Jim, you book the Hunchbacks, build them up, they're undefeated. Then you book them with me and Arn. As soon as I tag in, I'm going to take one of them down, I'm going to slap an armbar on him and I'm going to make him submit. He is going to give up. I just beat your unbeatable team."
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Jim Herd’s Feud With Ric Flair
Perhaps the worst idea Jim Herd ever had was his pitch to Ric Flair. Herd and Flair had a notorious rivalry, stemming from the fact that Herd had no idea just how important Ric Flair was to WCW at the time. Herd once asked Flair to cut his trademark blond hair, ditch the legendary robes and instead were an earring, and adopt a Roman Gladiator gimmick named “Spartacus.”
The ridiculous idea drove a wedge between Herd and Flair, and when Flair’s contract was coming up, Herd offered the wrestling legend less than half of his current pay and demanded Flair lose the title. Flair bolted from WCW as quickly as he could, walking right into WWF with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship still in his possession.
Flair wasn’t the only person who didn’t like Jim Herd, Herd alienated most of the roster as well as most of the booking committee. Herd let a roster of future Hall Of Fame names like Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, Mark Calloway, Stan Hanson, Sid Vicious, the Road Warriors, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Mick Foley all either go to WWF or he simply just didn’t use them.
Jim Herd’s embarrassing creative vision will go down as one of the worst in WCW history, and if you look at all the people who did book WCW, that is quite the accomplishment.
