William Regal to wrestlers: “Please pin and kick out like your life and career depend on it”

We are portraying trained pro fighters with instincts, even in comedy bouts. If you don’t win, you would make less money in the story we’re telling. Every TV bout, if there’s a pin, the cameras focus in. Please pin and kick out like your life and career depend on it. In the story, they do.

I’ve also been a part of knowing most talent since the 2000s in many companies. As time goes by, younger talent copy their favorites from film. I recently watched AJ Styles vs. Amazing Red from the early 2000s. I see how many people copied them.

What I saw was that every pin was aggressively applied, with the shoulders covered and stacked. Every kickout was done like their life depended on it. Something has been lost in the last 20-plus years.

Let’s not insult the intelligence of our audience, who are giving us their precious time. In a fight scene in a movie, which is what wrestling is, we know the punches don’t really hit, but if we saw that, we would eventually stop watching it.

Your audience and fans deserve better. If you can’t be uncomfortable for a few seconds being stacked up in a pin, maybe this isn’t for you.”