IMPACT Wrestling’s Eli Drake recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Kevin Kellam, and the ‘Namer Of Dummies’ said his wrestling tastes do not include hardcore wrestling.
Drake talked about his recent issues with Eddie Edwards, who has become a little more ‘extreme’ in the past several months. Eli said he can see a correlation between Edwards’ new behavior and the lack of gold around the waist of ‘Mr. Anything Is Possible’:
“Just looking at the trajectory of his career, you look at a guy who is a former World Champion, a former X Division Champion, a former Tag Team Champion. Now he’s begun to take on this hardcore thing the past year or so—maybe less than that, I haven’t kept track—however long it’s been, but I haven’t seen him carrying around any gold, have you?
I just put two and two together, and it seems like hardcore and the spot monkeys are a plague on this business. My overture, basically, was to get him to rethink where he’s going. We’ll see if he does, we’ll see if he returns to his old ways, or if he continues with the way he’s going.”
Eli was asked about more recent ‘shock’ events, including Priscilla Kelly‘s infamous tampon spot and some of the more violent clips that gain popularity. Eli said they don’t neccessarily add to wrestling, noting the lack of storytelling and lasting power in some of these moves:
“The ‘Jackass’ movies [brought in] millions, so if that’s what you want to do with your wrestling, more power to you. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t want to do it, I’d rather tell stories and make something that feels more—art might be a heavy word—but it is what it is at the end of the day. What’s always driven me, and I think what’s driven big audiences, it’s been stories, it’s been characters, the wrestling’s almost been the icing on the cake in a certain sense.
If you actually look—I actually just went back and watched long form an old episode from the ‘Attitude Era’ of RAW—I was 30 minutes in before I saw a match go start to finish. It was talking segments, it was a match that maybe got started and ended up in a schmoz, but the idea was that everybody was interested in it. Everyone was tuning in, and the reason was because there were hot stories top to bottom. There were big characters top to bottom, and that’s what keeps the people in it. The wrestling, I feel like it’s maybe been overly focused on in a certain sense, where guys do crazy, crazy moves. People react to it in the moment, and that’s great, but the things that people carry with them and the things you remember are the moments you leave them with, the quotes you leave them with, the things that they can interact with, things they can come back and recite with you. That’s the kind of things that are missing.
If you want to beat each other bloody with a light tube and whatever else, have at it, but I won’t be there.”
Listen to the full interview with Eli Drake below:
