Billy Gunn hopes today’s wrestlers will slow down in the ring so they can be in the business for longer than a few years.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Billy Gunn was the latest guest on The Sessions with Renee Paquette to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about how hard it is to teach younger wrestlers to understand emotion, Gunn admitted that it’s extremely hard to do.
“That is a great question, and it is extremely hard to do,” Billy Gunn said. “You have to have a trust with all talent when you do that. And it’s not like, okay, you’re the head coach who I instantly trust you, or hey, you’ve been doing this for 30-something years, I instantly trust you. It’s not a thing. It’s just not how we’re built or how we’re programmed to do it. If they would just trust it and understand that we’re here to show you that direction and get you over like a bunch of wrestling moves is just a bunch of wrestling moves. If I don’t have emotion in the people’s backing, they’ll just forget about it the next match they see because they’re gonna see the exact same thing when you tell them, okay, how about taking this out, they hear, ‘Hey, you don’t want me to do my stuff.’
“And I’m like, that’s not true. It doesn’t have to be a five-star match or a WrestleMania match every time you’re out there. Like they’ll do that on Dark, and it’s nothing against the Dark or Elevation show. Those are our secondary shows. Even when you’re on Dynamite and Rampage doesn’t mean that you have to unload everything you have in seven minutes. That’s crazy. Because now you’re just going through stuff. You’re just going through the motions, and you’re not in it. So if you’re not in it, how would you want me to be in it but then they’ll do something like some crazy thing that thinks that the people are in it, but they’re just reacting because they can’t do that. And it’s pretty cool, but it’s very unforgettable.
“So I think just building trust with the talent and getting them to just do this one time, but then they get in there and then they just did that again. I have to go through like, ‘I was taught a bunch of wrestling, and so I have to do them all.’ Like that’s just a thing is just like they have to slow down like they don’t realize you want to do this for a long time or do you just want to do it for a couple of years because your body can’t take all that they’re just beating themselves to death. Instead of when they get to one of those high-caliber matches. Once they get there, what do you have to show me?”
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What do you make of Billy Gunn’s comments? Do you think more of today’s wrestlers need to slow down and stop trying to do everything each time they’re in the ring? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
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