Nick Dinsmore (WWE's Eugene) talks coaching and pet peeves.
Before taking on the gimmick of Eugene in WWE, where he appeared on screen with the likes of Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Vince McMahon, Triple H, and more, Nick Dinsmore was viewed as one of the most technically proficient wrestlers in OVW and later parlayed his in-ring prowess into a training role and has even acted as a guest coach at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida.
Speaking on the FTW Podcast, Dinsmore reflected on getting his start as a trainer during a golden-age in Ohio Valley Wrestling's history.
"I just kind of fell into coaching. I think it was more that Danny Davis at OVW noticed that I had a knack for telling people how to do something simply that way they can understand," he said. "So, I was a coach for a bit at OVW when guys like John Cena, Batista, and Randy Orton were there. Then I opened my own pro wrestling company in South Dakota, had that for a while. I also coached at the Performance Center. It's just something that I've been able to do, so whenever I come to town, and I'm wrestling on a show, a lot of the promoters say that their wrestlers want a seminar. So, we sit down, we talk about the business, watch the matches, watch some technique, and share some knowledge."
Asked about his pet peeves as a coach, Dinsmore spoke about the believability of professional wrestling and the need to suspend disbelief, saying that he was always taught the business should be presented as close to an authentic contest as possible.
"Even if you have a simple match and it looks perfect and solid, that's better than trying to have an A+ match where you do all kinds of stuff and half of it looks phony," he said. "I was thought that you're supposed to make this business not look phony, and in the psychology of the business, if I'm running around doing jumping jacks and [hurricanranas] off the top rope, some people go, 'Can that really happen?' Even the fact of shooting somebody in the ropes, you probably wouldn't see that in a bar fight. We have to suspend our disbelief at some point, but when guys do things that just make it look unreal [that's his pet peeve]. I don't know that the fans see it that way. Sometimes you start wrestling, you start learning, you see behind the curtain, and all of the sudden, you can't go back and just watch."
Nick Dinsmore has opened up in the past about whether or not the Eugene character would work in the modern era. Fans can read his comments here.
OVW is still going strong today and will be the subject of a new docu-series on Netflix. Learn more here.
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