Aron Stevens On How WWE Executives Approach Wrestling Regardless of Fan Response

In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Aron Stevens spoke about how the mindset of WWE’s executives is different than that of the company’s fans. Here are highlights:

On joining the NWA: “I was out of pro wrestling all together, completely out of it. I got a call about a year ago from Billy Corgan from the NWA, and I was actually in Hawaii filming a TV series. And I’m like, ‘I really don’t want to wrestle,’ and he goes, ‘no, this is what we’re doing. You’re going to want to be here. And I said, ‘fine.’ He was always great to me when we were with Impact and everything like that. So I got on a plane, went to Atlanta and when I got there, they flew me in a day early, and I just looked at the set, and I just went, ‘oh, yes. OK, I get it. You’re doing it right.’ Did that and I’ve known Dave Marquez for years, but we reconnected and started talking and everything like that. And then early this year, he was like, ‘hey, would you be interested in being the booker for Championship from Hollywood?’ OK, yeah, I’ll check it out. So the pandemic happened, couple months went by obviously and then here we are.”

On realizing how much he loved wrestling: “I think it was a year ago now, I was in Hawaii just filming my TV showing was happy, and now, things are different. And it’s funny because acting has all but slowed down. Only in the last two weeks or maybe three weeks, auditions are starting to happen now and you start reading more and stuff like that. But this has been keeping me busy, and it’s been a lot of fun. I didn’t realize I love the business as much as I did because I’ve always been so, lackadaisical is not the right adjective, but I worry about my stuff. Make my segment the best it can be, go out there, rock the people and then don’t care about anything else and obviously, I say that in the context of my segment in terms of the show. I mean, I’m not going to be trying to hurt anybody else on the show or anything like that, but from my contribution, whatever I have in the parameters I’m given, go make it the best you can and leave. And that detachment, I want to say, from the business side of things has always kind of served me well, but now that I’m on this side of it, it’s given me a whole new perspective.”

On WWE’s approach to booking: “I try to treat talent with respect, number one, first and foremost because I know what I didn’t like. WWE is a very big company, so you can’t fault them for this. They cannot give every single talent individual attention. They can’t. They have to focus on the guys that they want to be the top guys because whoever is the top guy there is someone that they want to be, and by ‘they’, I mean one person or two or three people. And it’s that simple, and it does work like that regardless of fan response or anything else, but as a wrestler, I was always like, ‘oh, fan response wise, I’m here.’ And maybe in a corporate boardroom, they didn’t see it like that. Maybe they had, from a the business end of things, they wanted to go with somebody for marketing purposes or whatever. That’s just that machine, and it doesn’t make it right or wrong, which is why I’ve never really buried them because you know what? WWE’s a certain kind of machine, and I played in that sandbox and then I did try to make the most of my time.”