Russo is joined on today’s show by Big Vito.
Vito says he’s quite concerned about the state of professional wrestling today. He points out that kayfabe can still work if performers tried to protect it, but today’s generation takes the business for granted. He adds that trying to out-flip each other one match after the next on an indie show is not the way to earn new fans, especially when a lot of those performers don’t look like professional wrestlers.
Russo thinks there’s a couple of things that could happen which would result in the old style of professional wrestling returning. He believes fans will continue to tune out because eventually performers will not be able to show fans any new moves. Everything will be done, and then fans will get bored of this flip-flop style.
Secondly, he points out that the change could occur when performers start dropping like flies due to injury. When this happens, maybe promoters and the performers themselves will realize that not only does this style not sell to a mainstream audience, it’s also very dangerous and will shorten performers’ careers.
Russo says that it really bothers him when he talks to younger indie performers and they claim that they’re evolving the wrestling business. He’d have no issue if they claimed that they’re changing the business, but they certainly shouldn’t claim to be evolving it. If you take the psychology, characters and storylines out of professional wrestling, you can no longer call it professional wrestling.
