WWE Hall Of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was a guest on The Taz Show: Bodyslams and Beyond earlier this week and spoke about various issues related to the state of the pro wrestling industry. Here are there highlights..
Austin continues to voice his opinion that promos are entirely over-scripted, which stifles creativity and prevents the wrestlers from fully getting over.
“I don’t like to be the bitter veteran that complains about the system, but, I don’t believe that promos should be scripted,” Austin said. “A couple of bullet points, yes, to point a cat in the right direction, but you’ve got to be out there and be able to feel at home and believe with conviction and your heart and your soul with everything that you’re saying and if you’re just trying to be an orator or someone who delivers a speech, that’s not effective in my opinion. And to me, to draw money, you’ve got to be able to reach people’s heartstrings and reach some kind of guttural response or just anything that resonates with them.”
Despite the limitations of a stale creative environment, Austin says today’s WWE Superstars are athletically superior to the generations that proceeded them. That said, it’s not just about bouncing around in the ring and current performers need to focus on selling and telling a story.
“These guys are a step above our generation and the generations before us, athletically. What they can do in the ring is amazing and they’re great athletes, but I can give you Flair/Windham from ’87 or ’86 and those guys are working at today’s pace, but they’re selling everything, they’re not telegraphing anything, they’re not foreshadowing the next sequence of moves. It’s about 50-50 or 70-30 called in the ring and so it feels spontaneous and it feels different. It feels like a shoot. So there’s a real fine line between taking all that athleticism and you’re going to set up a little bit of stuff, but when it looks like you’re just going through the motions, you’re just going through the motions and people can see that. And you’ve got to be able to feel and really get behind a character and a personality and the human that’s doing that. I mean, that’s the money level.”
NXT Champion Finn Balor was also a recent guest on The Taz Show and explained that he’s in no hurry to join the main roster. Stone Cold also has some concerns about Balor getting called up and whether his character will connect with the WWE Universe. Austin put over Balor as a great human being and a hellacious worker, but it’s all about getting the fans behind your character.
“I’m wondering if he’s going to get lost in the shuffle a little bit [on the main roster]. He does that crawl to the ring and sometimes it takes so long. It’s a little disconcerting because I’ve seen the kid. Good looking kid, worked for many years in Japan, and he’s very technical from Ireland or wherever he’s from. Great kid! Great kid! Hell of a worker. Ten times the worker I ever was, but he [has] got to connect with those people. And so hopefully that gimmick allows him to do that. And it’s a great look. You can make a lot of action figures off of it, but put all the pieces together. People [have] got to care about him to become emotionally invested in him, but a great human being and a hellacious worker.”
He added that he’s not totally sold on Balor’s elaborate ring entrance because he finds it unrealistic that his opponent will stand in the ring waiting while Balor takes his time crawling to the ring. If Austin would have been in the ring waiting for Finn Balor to finish his ring entrance, “I’d have to go stomp a mud hole in him and walk it dry when I’d have the opportunity because that’s what ‘Stone Cold’ would do.”
