CORNETTE: I met Rick Rubin through Cat Collins, a DJ friend of mine that had worked for Rubin at American Recordings. Rick Rubin was a big wrestling fan and he had just made like $100 million from CBS Records. He liked southern territory wrestling, wild stuff, big heat, that type of thing. I pitched him the idea of starting a wrestling company, because I had an idea of where we could do it. That was the genesis. I spent all of 1991 going back and forth to California to talk with Rick.
MANTEL: The wrestling business was in transition at the time. All the mom and pop promotions were dropping like flies.
CORNETTE: Nobody knew what the hell we were doing because we weren’t talking with any wrestlers. We could get them last. We needed buildings and production companies and TV stations so this eccentric music genius could somehow own a wrestling company in Tennessee.
D’LO BROWN: [Cornette] was a good character and a good entertainer, but he also knew TV stations, syndication, how to book venues and how to promote. It was eye-opening to see that other side of him.
CORNETTE: I got a building rent free and made two TV pilots, which ended up being show No. 1 and No. 2. We used those shows to go to stations to sell a wrestling TV show. We were trying to be a little more serious than the colorful world of WWE. We wanted to get away from “sports-entertainment.”
https://www.wwe.com/classics/oral-history-of-smoky-mountain-wrestling 
