Billy Gunn on how wrestling has changed: “I feel it’s all about moves now – there’s no structure to it, there’s no sense to it”
While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, wrestling veteran Billy Gunn commented on how professional wrestling has changed over the past 30 years…
“Oh God, this is where I get laced. I feel it’s all about moves now. I feel it’s just moves. It’s just, you want to learn how to wrestle? Okay, I’m going to show you a bunch of moves. Okay, we have a show tonight. You want to go work it? Sure. What are you going to do? You’re going to do everything I taught you. There’s no structure to it. There’s no sense to it. There’s nothing—you’re just doing all the moves that I taught you how to do in however long we have.
So the problem is the people won’t know any different, other than it’s the first time that they see you. But you’re diving out of the ring, you’re landing on your head, you’re getting slammed on the apron for some ungodly reason—which seems to be a thing these days. If they took their time and did them in the middle of the ring where they’re supposed to, they’d get the same reaction if you do it right as they do when you get slammed on the hardest part of the ring. Because now it’s cool to be killed halfway through your match.
But it’s just moves now, to where back then it was—yeah, there were no moves, because everything was structured so good and the storylines were so good that it’s where the people are at. Oh, The Rock comes out, or let’s say Stone Cold comes out, and the place goes absolutely ballistic, right? How do you get them out of the ceiling? Oh, you punch him right in his mouth and get him down. Get him to where the people don’t want him.
Is he going to get there? No. Does he know that? Yes—because Steve’s probably not a good one, because he’s just such a butt-beater. I don’t want to cuss on your show. So let’s go with The Rock. I’ve worked him a couple times in singles. To get the people out of the ceiling so we can go somewhere to where you get a reaction—he’s already got a reaction because they’re already doing all the stuff.
So you punch him in the mouth, right? You put him on the sell. Now the people are down here because they’re going, ‘Oh, now it’s come on.’ They’re just waiting. And the minute you spin him around and he pops me, and I flop around like that, the people lose their minds. So now we’ve done really nothing but gotten a monster reaction, because we’re just playing with the people. We’re just taking them where I want to take them.
If we’re here, how much higher can they go? Nowhere. So they have to come here so I can get them back to here. So I just feel that it’s just a bunch of wrestling moves now.”