Felix Upton on December 24, 2020
Jim Ross created a few headlines when he spoke his mind about a spot that is frequently seen on AEW programming. He doesn’t care for no-selling moves that used to finish matches, or spots where wrestlers “gather like quail” to catch a “leaping idiot.” That caused some controversy within All Elite Wrestling.
Some AEW stars were not happy about Jim Ross’ statement. Brandon Cutler even trolled JR a bit while promoting a 14-man tag team match, a contest Cutler was eventually pulled from.
During the most recent Grilling JR, the WWE Hall of Fame announcer spoke about the controversy. Jim Ross isn’t apologizing for having an opinion. Instead, he wants to know what the limit is if this practice continues.
“I expressed an opinion, a philosophical opinion and I use a lot of football analogies. That’s like saying ‘I wanna run the wishbone.’ Whether that’s a good statement or a bad statement is merely an opinion. It’s an observation. It’s something that I would do in a fantasy booking world. I believe what I said was accurate. I also believe that, at the time, and I apologize for this I can be coarse. I can be very upfront. I’d rather tell you what time it is than make the watch. I think that’s what I did there, and I was a little abrasive. I didn’t mention any names. I didn’t call anybody out. I tried to report it as what I think it to be: an industry-wide issue.”
“What next? You know I told a couple of talents the other day at AEW, I said, ‘let’s use the scaffold match as a parallel. What’s next? A higher scaffold? What do you do? How do you do scaffold match two? Bigger and badder than ever, so somebody’s gonna fall farther. That’s what you got.'”
“So, I did ruffle some feathers. It wasn’t my intention, but I wanted people to pay attention that this is an issue. Where does it stop? How can we protect our talent who truly believe in their hearts that this is the way to create an emotional investment with the paying customer or the TV viewer?”
“That’s kinda where we were there. It’s like when is enough enough, and some things are simply illogical. If I call matches throughout my career, not just in AEW, with reality in mind? Can you imagine all the times you could have some fun, or not, but be honest about things and call sh*t out? It would be terrible. I think it’s getting more laxed.”
Jim Ross’ opinion comes from decades in the pro wrestling business. He has seen wrestlers fall in the to same trap of trying to top a previous performance too many times before. His words weren’t taken too kindly by everyone. Others, like Darby Allin, did agree with Good ‘ole JR.
Transcription by Ringside News
December 24, 2020 2:14 pm
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