Former ECW Heavyweight Champion and WWE veteran Justin Credible has a new podcast with Jax Stevens “I Hate This Podcast.” One half of The Impact Players previews this week’s WrestleMania 35 and also shares his thoughts on Luke Harper’s situation of feeling under-utilized. Quotes are below:
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
Justin Credible on understanding Luke Harper’s situation:
Yeah, I get that. For me though, at least the way I took it, in his tone, cause I’ve been there and I’ve to deal with the politics it’s disheartening because, man, it feels like the world is against you and I know how agents or producers or whatever you call them, they’re always like, “Oh, are you still hurt?” Like almost like it’s a shot at him, like I get it. They used to always pull that shit, “Oh, you still hurt? Are you okay?” And deep down, it’s all mind games. So they’re fucking with him right now and it breaks my heart cause he’s a really great pro wrestler, he’s a great athlete, huge dude, I think he has a great look. He’s a killer.
On the WrestleMania booking of Braun Strowman (or lack thereof):
“This is kind of weird cause they push Braun Strowman all year, pretty much during the Royal Rumble, after the Royal Rumble, and they really didn’t have anything for him going in WrestleMania so basically, you know and I know, and that’s why the Saturday Night Live guys are in it, this is the Braun Strowman show. This match is basically just to get him over.”
Stevens: “Really? Cause, I don’t know. I kinda see Braun Strowman going out early.”
Credible: “Not a chance, man. They’re booking this cause they feel like they wasted all their money and television time booking Braun Strowman strong and look, they’ve got so many guys on there: Matt & Jeff Hardy who are always going to be fan favorites, they’re legends, they’re future Hall of Famers, you have Bobby Roode, look the list goes on and on…
“I guarantee you that this battle royal will be quick and it will be over and under ten minutes and it will just feature a couple of Hardy things and it will come down to those Saturday Night Live guys because that’s their main stream publicity, that mainstream celebrity gimmick and Braun Strowman just going to shine and that’s going to be – this the vehicle to get Braun over and to give him something at WrestleMania 35.”
On the trouble with the 4+ hour stadium shows like WrestleMania:
I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what professional business you’re in, whether it’s football, rock’n’roll, whether you’re doing concerts, movies, anything – once you’re getting into that three, four, five-hour mark – that always bothered me and we talked about this too here, stadium shows tend to be a drag. They tend to be hard. I mean, when you’re in a stadium show, you’re in the ring and you feel like you just can’t connect to fans that are almost 50, 60 yards away from you. They are pretty much watching you on a big screen so it’s not like it is you know during other events where there are 20,000 people packed into a smaller facility. So that’s gonna be something I’m going to like to see how it comes across, you know?
On attending live television wrestling shows in comparison to just a wrestling show:
When I went to SmackDown, I paid attention more to the Tron than I did the ring. A lot of people don’t understand it’s so weird when they cut to commercials or they’re going to video packages and you have talent in the ring for two and a half to three minutes, sitting there basically with their thumb up their asses.
It’s very awkward and for the sake of the television product it really takes away from the live event. So a lot of times, we’re all fans here, but us as, we critique the business, we talk about the business. We gotta take into consideration that it’s not necessarily normal situations where – the fans really have to take cues from the television, it’s like, “Alright, shut it down here, start to cheer here.” Almost like a studio audience.
There’s plenty more from this podcast as Credible and his crew break down each match for listeners and even share a chat with Jason Powell of ProWrestling.net. You can listen to the entire episode below and subscribe to “I Hate This Podcast” by going here.
