MVP: “The people who have drawn the most money through the years did it because of character work”

I think too, because I’ve said this many times and I’ll never get tired of saying this, you have some extremely talented wrestlers that have drawn money through the years based solely on their in-ring ability. But the people who have drawn the most money through the years did it because of character work.

Stone Cold Steve Austin drew more money than anybody. How many flips did he do? What did he do off the top rope? He kicked and punched his way to infamy. Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, The Rock, John Cena, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton — these are your biggest money earners. They don’t do a lot, but their character work draws you in.

So, I think young guys — and we’ve created an atmosphere where you’re trying to get yourself over by impressing the fans with, ‘Oh, look at all the cool stuff I can do.’ They try to get every cool move they can in the 10 minutes that they have, and you’re just throwing it away because people can’t really get a chance to absorb what you did.

If you took out two or three of those other things, did that one really cool thing, and let people go ‘oh,’ and then gave them some character — instead of doing that extra thing, take a moment to show whatever your character is, your personality.

I think it’s important to create a persona that will allow people to like or dislike you, to connect or disconnect. Yeah, you can do cool — but a lot of guys can do cool. Now, the athleticism in our industry is unbelievable.

You know, I used to watch Rey Mysterio and think… as a matter of fact, I forgot who said it, but years ago when I was in WWE, if you did a tryout, you weren’t going to impress [Fit] Finlay or [William] Regal with your flips. There’s nothing you can do better than Rey Mysterio. You’re not going to do anything they haven’t seen Rey Mysterio do better.

And then Ricochet comes along and you go, ‘Oh wow.’ Then a guy like Will Ospreay comes along, and you’ve got these guys that just do amazing, gravity-defying things. El Hijo del Vikingo, some of these luchadors in Mexico, PAC — ‘the man that gravity forgot’ — can do unbelievable things. But what makes your unbelievable things stand out from everybody else’s unbelievable things? The character.

Prove me wrong — Ricochet is doing better now than he’s done in his whole career. He can still do all that stuff, but it’s when he does it and how he does it. Now, people — I see some of the things people say to Ricochet on social media — people really hate Ricochet. Hate him, man.

What makes me laugh is that he’s on social media trolling, and people think that’s really him. I’m laughing because sometimes he’ll be like, ‘Watch this,’ and people think that’s really his personality. No — that’s this new character he’s embraced, that he’s mixing into social media. This is modern-day wrestling, where you’re blurring the lines between the person and the character. Now, people hate Ricochet.

I think Will Ospreay has come a long way in becoming more of a lovable babyface that people like. They want to hear him talk, and he can do amazing things.

If you have a movie, and your hero is just going through the whole movie kicking everybody’s ass — car chases, shootouts — but there’s never a chance for the hero to sit down, drink a shot of whiskey, and say a cool line… well, that’s when you decide you like this guy, right?

If he’s just beating everybody’s ass, okay, that’s cool, but you don’t get to connect with the character. Think of any movie — where you’ve got a villain or a babyface, there are scenes where you go, ‘Oh, that was cool.’ It’s usually something the character said, or something he said before he did something.

I think the young talent are trying to cram too many cool-ass moves in a match so that they can get everybody to go, ‘Wow, that guy can do a lot of cool moves.’ But I think a lot of them would learn that if you take time to add in character — to allow the people to respond to the person that’s doing those things — it will get you way further, quicker.”