Chris Masters says the emotional backstage scenes fans are seeing on WWE: Unreal would have gone over very differently when he was coming up in WWE.
While speaking to Hannibal TV, the former WWE Superstar was asked about all the hugging and crying shown behind the curtain on WWE: Unreal. Masters admitted he hasn’t watched much of the series, but once he realized both male and female wrestlers were being shown getting emotional backstage, he immediately pointed out how different WWE was during his run. Masters first wanted to make sure he understood exactly what Hannibal was talking about.
“Wait, are you talking about — because I haven’t watched a lot of it — are you talking about there’s, like, a lot of crying? No, but is it the guys or the girls crying? You’re saying it’s the guys?”
After being told that both the men and women cry on WWE: Unreal, Masters said that simply wouldn’t have flown in the locker room he entered.
“You would not be able to cry in the era I came up in, man. I mean, there would be some very special circumstances where you could, but I don’t know, man. It just wouldn’t be really acceptable.”
Masters said the backstage culture during his WWE days was built around a much tougher mentality. Unless something extremely serious happened, wrestlers weren’t shedding tears around Gorilla and expecting nobody to say anything about it.
“Again, it was just much more of a tough-guy era back then, I guess, because something monumental or horrific would have had to happen for there to be any tears shed in the Gorilla or immediate backstage area.”
That attitude lines up with plenty of what Masters had to say about WWE’s locker room during the same interview. He described an environment filled with veteran politics, ribbing and younger wrestlers constantly having to watch how they carried themselves around established names.
WWE: Unreal is basically showing the complete opposite side of that world. Cameras now catch wrestlers hugging, crying, celebrating and dealing with disappointment immediately after some of the biggest moments of their careers.
Masters isn’t saying wrestlers today shouldn’t show emotion. His point was that the locker room culture he came through simply didn’t leave much room for it. Back then, showing that kind of vulnerability in Gorilla could have put a target on somebody’s back. WWE has changed a lot since Masters was on the roster, and the reaction to WWE: Unreal makes that pretty obvious. What was once hidden behind a tough-guy locker-room mentality is now being shown directly to fans.
What do you think about Chris Masters saying WWE wrestlers wouldn’t have been able to cry backstage during his era? Do you prefer the old-school mentality, or do you like seeing the real emotions on WWE: Unreal? Leave your feedback in the comments.
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