Billy Gunn Doesn’t Think Wrestling Needs To Go Recent Extremes, ‘You Burn Down My House, You Die The Next Day’
Billy Gunn gives further comments on the current state of wrestling.
The envelope has always been pushed in wrestling, whether it was Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine breaking the leg of Wahoo McDaniel or Terry Funk trying to suffocate Ric Flair with a plastic bag.
AEW hasn’t been afraid to up the ante over the years, bringing back suffocation and adding things like attempted drowning.
Speaking to Eric Novak on the ALL Real Wrestling podcast, Billy Gunn gave his thoughts on pushing the envelope.
Gunn initially said that things were going too far, but then said they weren’t going too far. He continued, clarifying his stance.
“Sometimes I think it’s easier for them to hit people over the head with bricks and shove things in their face to get that reaction. Like they’re looking for a certain reaction because their wrestling can’t do it. I’m not saying they can’t, because they can wrestle. It’s just they’ve exhausted the wrestlig part and now this storyline is, ‘Where do we go now? Oh I stomp a brick on your face.’ In actuality, can you really do that? You put a bag over someone’s head and try to kill them. You go to prison for that. I get where they’re trying to go, I really do, but for me personally, it’s too much. ‘I’m going to burn down somebody’s house, and you’re not going to come absolutely murder me?’ If you come and burn down my house, you die the next day.
“We are entertainers at the heart of it. We can still get really good storylines, I just feel we hot shot them so fast and we don’t let them have time to build. Swerve and Hangman have a wrestling match. Swerve cheats to beat him. Now, we’ve done that, I’m going to burn down your house and hit you with a brick. I feel that’s where people think we have to get to. We don’t. We just come up with better storylines and how to enhance a story. I do understand it’s all make believe, but we have to be as realistic as possible with UFC and everyone knows everything now. They still come to matches and they still want to suspend their disbelief. They want to be worked, but we don’t work them.”
Gunn stated multiple times that he wasn’t singling out Swerve Strickland and Hangman Page, but using them as an example given their recent storyline.
Elsewhere during the interview, Gunn gave further comments on the state of wrestling. You can find his full comments here.
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