Barry Horowitz On Which Legend He Spoke To About Working For AEW
On a recent episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily, Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman released part two of his conversation with legendary pro wrester Barry Horowitz. In part one Horowitz went into detail about his discussions with Matt Bloom during his talks about coaching at the WWE Performance Center. That led Hausman to ask Horowitz if he's had any talks with AEW as well.
"I talked to Arn Anderson. What really perplexed me about Arn Anderson, when I was working WCW, when I was first there, when I met Arn in '83, we always got along," Horowitz noted. "I never traveled with him. He traveled with [Ric] Flair. They had their deal. I traveled with other guys, not a problem, but at TV time, it was Terry Taylor, and Arn and everything. He was always standing up for me, always liked me. Now granted, I haven't spoke to the man in 20 years. Why? I haven't had his number. There's no reason. In this wrestling business, sometimes you don't keep in touch. It's not a team sport like the NFL. I hate to say that because I've been in team sports. My favorite line is, if you want a friend in the wrestling business, buy a dog.
"I don't understand Arn. He didn't return my phone calls right away, and he gave me a safe answer. 'I mentioned your name to Cody, and he'll get back.' He probably didn't, but I'm looking at what you've got there and there's a place for me there. Not to wrestle but to teach ideas in the background. Do I need to tryout? Do you need to look at my resume? Do you need to go ask Dean Malenko if I'm a solid worker? Am I a s**t disturber? It's a shame, and their protocol, and their design and everything about them, I love because there's a lot of wrestling there. A lot of tag teams but that's up to them. What I did notice and maybe it's just me, I've noticed a couple of mistakes when I watched their show, and I'm saying, I wonder why the guys in the back don't say nothing.
"Maybe they have or maybe they're afraid to. But if I'm back there and they're asking me to help this product be better, first of all, I'm going to say, 'hey, a little bit less haha and gaga outside the ring. The wrestling is inside the ring.' Now, I'm new school and old school. There's nothing wrong with moonsaults and doing all that but not every match. You're spoiling the fans. The only people that see it is ringside, and then the death-defying finishes, you're hitting me with five or six and then beat me with a small package, makes no sense psychology wise.
Horowitz continued as he critiqued the in-ring psychology in AEW.
"And my biggest gripe is, in old school, there's verbiage in the ring, what you call a spot or whatever and one of them is called one-two. Basically, one-two means I hit you. You hit me. I hit you. You hit me. It's called one-two. I bet you every other match calls that spot. The girls do it. The tag does it. Watch them. Watch them this week. Watch them next week. You're gonna see it. You got to stop that s**t guys. It's too much. A good, versatile worker could work around that.
"I come up to you. 'Hey, I can't take that move.' Okay, I'll give you another one. I'll give you another one. I'll be there all night. I will accommodate you. I am not a limited worker. I don't clothesline, punch and kick. I know about 55,000 things. You could change things up, and that one-two, come on guys, you could do something else, get creative. Somebody needs to correct that. It's not being mean. It's called doing my job and corrective criticism. There's nothing wrong with it. I've been told by agents, Tony Garea, Grizz Smith, George 'The Animal Steele', the list goes on, they corrected different things of mine, and they were right. And I cleaned them up, and I'm glad because I think about that.
"I don't overthink. Bob Backlund told me this once, 'When you're a worker and you get in that ring, you don't want to overthink. You don't want to under think. You got to keep it in the middle.' Do you know how hard it is to keep it in the middle? You really got to think about it, work hard, think about it before your match. And then I would go on a drive home or to plane ride home. I go over my match in my head. I think it improves your craft. I do it with my training methods, my diet methods. Guess what, it works for Barry, and Barry's sticking with it. I don't care what other people think. They don't pay my bills. They don't have my family. They don't have anything. So let me be because I've seen other guys that had issues, and you wind up like Chris Adams."
You can find Barry on Cameo HERE and follow his Facebook page HERE. The full audio and video from part two of Barry's interview can be found below.
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