Gillberg On Why Pro Wrestling Has Lost Its Luster
Former WWE Light Heavyweight Champion Gillberg was recently a guest on the Completely Damaged Radio podcast, and shared his thoughts on why pro wrestling has lost its luster. Gillberg feels that wrestlers just are not booked on the level as they used to be, and suggested a solution to change this problem.
"My true feeling is, you need to go back to having jobbers, or at least guys who don't win a lot and don't perform on house shows," said Gillberg. "Because of the fact [that] you can't put [Randy] Orton against, say, Jeff Hardy on TV, and then put it on a house show and expect to pack the house. The way [WWE] used to do it is they had the big names beat up these lesser-named guys, but the reason they packed the house is because it was a big name against a big name and you never got to see that on TV, except for the very last match and it always ended, 'Oh, no! We're going to go into next week! You have to find out next week what the end of the match is!'"
This type of suspense was regularly seen on Monday Nitro, as Tony Schiavone would often yell, "We've gotta go! We're outta time!" and Bobby Heenan would respond by stating, "no no no," to make the ending of the show both captivating, as well as get the viewers highly anticipating the following week.
Gillberg stated that those kinds of cliffhangers made wrestling exciting and caused to want to watch the product even more because the company promoted two big names to compete against each other. Now, Gillberg explained, the interest is much lower because the same matches happen all the time.
"It makes them larger than life," said Gillberg regarding the importance of wrestlers fighting lesser-named talent. "It makes them larger than they are, because they're just crushing these people."
The intrigue of two people who have crushed a string of other wrestlers finally clashing against each other is what makes wrestling compelling, Gillberg feels. "Everywhere you went, it would be packed," said Gillberg regarding making wrestlers feel larger-than-life again.
Source: Complete Damaged Radio