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By: Ed Ferrara
10/12/2005 2:33:51 PM

Dear Jim:

I truly hope that it’s all a work... in some way, shape or form.

There is so much I’d like to say to you... stuff I’ve wanted to say for a good, long time. I wouldn’t blame you if never read this -- never clicked on it, never cared to hear what I have to say. You’d be entirely within your rights, given the amount of personal pain I caused you years ago. But I want to say it now, given recent events.

I’ve long thought about tracking you down somehow -- finding your number and calling you. But I wanted to be able to express what I was feeling... and if you hung up the phone upon hearing my name, I wouldn’t have blamed you. But I also wouldn’t have had the opportunity to say what was in my heart.

I hurt you in ways that I could only imagine with those tasteless bits I did during WCW (as well as that one time in WWF). You never asked for it. You never deserved it. Yet, I still did it... and I was dead wrong to have done it.

I’m not going to assign blame to anyone but myself. Vince Russo feels responsible for having come up with the idea to send me out to ridicule you... but, at the end of the day, I was the one who went out and did it. I could have just as easily said “No” to the entire gimmick, but I didn’t. We both know that this is an ugly business that brings out the worst in people, and I displayed that I wasn’t immune to it. I went out there in front of all those fans (back when there still were a few hundred of them left in WCW), and made a mockery... of myself. Deep down, I knew what I was doing was wrong... yet I rationalized it all to myself. I tried to convince myself that “all’s fair in love and war.” I ignored the nagging feelings in the back of my mind and deep in my heart that told me that what I was doing was awful in so many ways. It was spiteful. It was petty. It was mean. Ugly. Uncalled-for. Pure-D wrong. I only wish I could go back and erase that entire chapter, but I can’t.

(And that’s saying nothing about the one time I did it while we were working together in the WWF. Sunday Night Heat in Bakersfield. Given the pressure from above, neither of us felt like we were in any position to balk at what we were being told to do. I would have been been taking things “too seriously” and being “too senstive” if I had resisted. You would have been accused of being a “bad sport” if you had. I don’t think either of us were happy that night. I think that the popped sternum I got from Doc’s bump was karma biting me in the ass... If only I had looked back on it that way when I was in WCW, perhaps I’d have never gone on to rub salt in an already painful wound.)

There’s nothing like being away from the business to help one gain some perspective. In hindsight, I’m still ashamed of what I did.

At the time we worked together, you were a good man doing an incredibly difficult, thankless job -- a job that I didn’t make any easier. Sure, you were a gruff ol’ bear... but then, you had more than earned the right. You were one of the hardest working people in a company of workaholics and you hadn’t had the easiest life outside of work, to say the very least. And who the hell was I? Some punk brought in to help out the company. I had been fitted with horse-blinkers pretty much the day I first started with the company... and, as a result, I had about as much perspective at the time on who you were as you had on me.

But I never got a chance to tell you how much I respected you. I wished that we could have all been working together, rather than at cross-purposes. But, then again, that’s the corporate way, isn’t it? Pit everyone against each other and see who’s still standing in the end. Darwinism at its most despicable.

You probably won’t believe this, but I always enjoyed talking with you -- whether it was a meeting in your office going over plans for the current roster, or running into each other over a smoke in the Stamford office’s parking structure. I enjoyed it because I listened to you. I learned from you. I was always a fan... the problem was I just couldn’t BE a fan at the time. Too much pressure from above to take what “Good Ol’ JR” had to say with a grain of salt kept me from treating you with the respect I had for you, not to mention the respect you deserved.

In my opinion, you were -- and ARE and WILL ALWAYS BE -- the best in the business. As a fan, I know there will never be anyone who will come close to you behind that microphone. No one has ever made me feel the emotion that you did when you’d call a match -- ever. No one will ever know the right things to say at the perfect moments like you do -- ever. No one will ever mean more to wrestling fans as not only an announcer, but as a human being -- ever.

I don’t watch wrestling anymore. I do still follow the ups and downs of the business through the internet. But yesterday, when I read what went down on Monday night’s television, I clicked on the WWE site to watch the footage.

I honestly couldn’t watch all of it. It made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t watch and see “Good Ol’ JR”™ in that ring. What I saw was Jim Ross, the human being, being used. Being abused. Being treated in a manner that’s deemed “acceptable” in this business, merely because the cameras were rolling.

You deserve so much better than the treatment you received, whether or not it’s “all” an angle. I’m not writing this to speculate work vs. shoot, but I will say this: if it is indeed an angle, the creative forces behind it should be ashamed for resorting to unnecessary, “disgusting” heat merely to put over the returning McMahon family characters. And if it’s NOT all for an angle -- if Monday night was truly your swan song on WWE TV -- I honestly hope that the fans are as turned off by it as I was, and they respond the only way they can... by refusing to watch for one second more.

Is this how a company treats one of it’s most valuable, most visible, most loyal employees? If Steve Ballmer announced he was retiring from Microsoft (or, more apropos, if he was being forced into retirement), do you think Bill Gates would do anything less than give him a grand hero’s send-off as a thanks for all the years of loyal service and dedication, regardless of Gates’ personal feelings toward Ballmer or his retirement? Of course not!

It’s called human decency.

As someone who’d been in the middle of that business, and is now (happily) looking in from the outside, I can honestly say that human decency is sorely lacking therein. Then again, maybe I just don’t “get it” anymore. If that is indeed the case, I’m truly glad I don’t.

No one loves this business with the passion you do, Jim. No one has dedicated himself to this business to the extent that you have over the past. And, similarly, no one’s been treated as poorly as you have been over the years -- by not only idiots like me, but by your own company. It’s quite a testament to this wonderful business, isn’t it?

As I said at the start of this letter, there’s so much I’d like to say to you. This was only a scratch of the surface as I’ve desperately tried to maintain focus and stay on point (not easy when you’re dealing with emotions). If you’d ever allow it, I would be honored to be able to apologize to you directly, and express how incredibly sorry I am for the manifold ways in which I hurt you. If you’d like to contact me -- if only to let me know how to contact you -- my email address is ed@edferrara.com

Keep your head high, Jim. You’re better than all of us.

Respectfully, Ed Ferrara

[NOTE: I started writing this letter yesterday at work with the intention of finishing it up and sending/posting it today... and now I see that Russo’s independently had the exact same impulse. Consider it a testament to the way we both truly feel in our hearts about you and the way you’ve been treated...]

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