Demolition Ax on modern wrestlers: “They’re very athletic, but a lot of the stuff is like gymnastics, it’s not wrestling”
While speaking on The Demolition Podcast, Demolition members Ax and Smash commented on gimmick matches in wrestling being overused and resulting in more injuries. Here were a few highlights from the discussion…
Ax: “Sometimes they just throw people into a gimmick match where there was no buildup for it. Sometimes that buildup was a year, a year and a half, and it culminated with, ‘Now we’re going to get a winner. Now it’s finally going to be settled.'”
Smash: “Some of them are getting hurt so badly they can hardly work anymore. And it’s just—that’s what’s so terrible. Each guy has to beat what the next guy does. When we were doing it, the blowoff was a cage match or whatever, and then they wouldn’t have a cage match again until somebody else had another blowoff. Now it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s just throw a cage match in there. Let’s have a ladder match.'”
Ax: “I worry about them as well, because a lot of the things I see—I just don’t understand it. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great athletes, they’re very athletic, but a lot of the stuff is like gymnastics. It’s not wrestling. They’re taking so many bumps. Like Barry [Smash] mentioned, the propensity for potential injury greatly accelerates. We used to wrestle with the idea that we were going to be in this business for a long period of time. You have wrestlers now who feel like they have to outdo the match before them—or the two or three matches before.”