On a recent episode of his podcast, “Grilling JR,” Jim Ross discussed WWE firing Shawn Staisak for recording ongoings in the WWE locker room in 1999 and more. Here are the highlights:
On why Staisak did it: “Because he was an idiot, Conrad. That’s why nobody had an explanation. It made no common sense. He f**ked up. He should have been fired, in my opinion.”
On Stasiak was fired: “The latter, a breach of trust. What happens in the locker room should just stay there. It doesn’t need to be shared by Vince, JR, or anybody else. It should stay there. I thought the ‘breach of trust’ term was right on, spot on. The talent didn’t want to work with him after that. They thought it was — it intruded on their privacy. And if somebody said something about getting laid last night and they were a married guy saying it, that ain’t real cool. And you don’t know where these tapes are going to end up.
“So bottom line is that he shouldn’t have done it. It was infiltrating the locker room, which you don’t do. You gotta give them some safe haven somewhere. I always thought it was the locker room. I always thought the locker room was a very important element of any pro wrestling company. And you look around at any wrestling company — any of them. There’s a lot of pro wrestling companies in business right now, but golly man. The locker room has gotta to be sacred, and it’s got to be protected. And I thought he didn’t do a very good job of protecting the locker room by recording that bulls**t.”
On firing him in public: “It says a message that this s**t ain’t going to be tolerated. And here’s what we’re getting rid of, a young guy that had some potential. He never realized it, but he had some potential. So it reminded everybody that we got rules here, and we got things that we gotta protect, and we’re going to protect them, even at the sake of getting rid of somebody.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the Grilling JR podcast with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.
