When I saw that Scott Steiner had done an interview with the Miami Herald, I figured it’d be like every other Steiner interview. He’s screaming! He thinks you’re gay! You’ve got a faaaat ass!
Truth be told, Scotty Steiner’s a legend in the wrestling business and even though he’s usually hiding it behind a wall of PEAKS ON PEAKS, he knows what he’s talking about. For example, he’s not a fan of WWE’s current TV-PG Era. Seriously, read this and tell me it isn’t on point:
“The ‘PG era’ blows,” he said. “The best time in wrestling was with the nWo and the Monday Night War between WCW and WWE. You had competition. Now there is no competition. I feel bad for the guys and the wrestlers coming up now. They are slotted into a character that sometimes they can’t even do. Most of the time it’s bullshit, and it sucks. I wouldn’t want to do it. You have a stupid character to do, but if you don’t do it, you don’t have a job …
You need competition for a business to truly thrive. Look at Vince [McMahon’s] numbers since he bought WCW. Then again he just lost like $400 million, projected to lose $50 million this year. So you couldn’t predict that after he bought WCW and doing 5’s and 6’s on the ratings scale.”
I’m not sure I agree with him that the Attitude Era was the best time in wrestling, but it was certainly profitable, and there is a great truth to the statement that wrestlers are slotted into ridiculous TV roles instead of being grown as performers and utilized based on their strengths. And who knew Big Poppa Pump could keep track of numbers like that?
Even better are Steiner’s comments on social media, which are surprisingly astute given that he could’ve just said “everybody on the Internet sucks” and been in the ballpark.
“All the social media and other things, a lot of it is bullshit. It doesn’t mean you’re going to draw or people are going to see you. You look at Charlie Sheen and then how many Twitter followers he had there and on Facebook. Then he tried to capitalize on it with a tour, and nobody came to watch him. Just because you have Twitter followers and Facebook doesn’t mean a whole lot and [doesn’t mean] people are going to pay to see you. A lot of that is misjudged. Just because you have people on their phone or Internet doesn’t mean they are going to pay. Same for the Network. I think they misjudged the popularity of it.”
I think the scariest thing about the current state of the wrestling business is that Scott Steiner is the voice of reason.
