Billy Gunn Shares His Thoughts On Modern Wrestling, Which Matches He Likes

Billy Gunn has seen wrestling change significantly in the past 30 years, and he shares his thoughts on the biggest way its changed. Gunn is part of AEW, a company that has gone in a different direction than WWE in terms of in-ring product.

Even WWE has changed a lot from the days of the Attitude Era, something Gunn was asked about on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He noted that it’s a more wrestling move-based game now, though he gave examples of some AEW matches that he thinks told great stories. You can see highlights below:

On the Biggest Difference In the Industry From 30 Years Ago:

“Oh God, this is where I get laced. I feel it’s all about moves now. I feel it’s just moves. It’s just, ‘You want to learn how to wrestle? Okay, I’m going to show you a bunch of moves.’ ‘Okay, we have a show tonight. You want to go work it?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘You’re going to do everything I taught you.’

“There’s no structure to it. There’s no sense to it. There’s nothing you’re just doing all the moves that I taught you how to do in however long we have. So the problem is the people won’t know any different, other than it’s the first time that they see you. But you’re diving out of the ring, you’re landing on your head. You’re getting slammed on the apron for some ungodly reason, which seems to be a thing these days. If they took their time and did them in the middle of the ring where they’re supposed to, they get the same reaction if you do it right as they do when you get slammed on the hardest part of the ring, because now it’s cool to be killed halfway through your match.”

On How It Used To Be:

“But it’s just moves now to where back then it was, yeah, there was no moves because everything was structured so good, and the storylines were so good, that it’s where the people are at. Oh, The Rock comes out,’ or let’s say Stone Cold comes out, and the place goes absolutely ballistic, right? How do you get them out of the ceiling? Oh, you punch him right in his mouth and get him down. Get him to where the people don’t want him. Is he going to get there? No. Does he know that? Yes, because Steve’s probably not a good one, because he’s just such a butt-beater upper. I don’t want to cuss on your show. So let’s go with The Rock. I’ve worked him a couple times in singles. To get the people out of the ceiling to so we can go somewhere to where you get a reaction. He’s already got a reaction, because they’re already doing all the stuff.

“So you punch him in the mouth, right? You put him on the sell. Now the people are down here because they’re going, Oh, now it’s come on. They’re just waiting. And the minute you spin him around, and he pops me, and I flop around like that. The people lose their minds. So now we’ve done really nothing, but got a monster reaction, because we’re just playing with the people. We’re just taking them where I want to take them. If we’re here, how much higher can they go? Nowhere. So they have to come here so I can get them back to here, so I just feel that it’s just a bunch of wrestling moves now.”

On a Match That He Would Describe As Appealing To Him:

“So I thought Brody King and Kyle Fletcher on our show did a great job. Brody took him out of all his stuff. Those two, Kyle and Takeshita, so is Will [Ospreay]. But I think Will, he knows so much that you can’t rope him in. But the last one that I saw that was really good like that was Brody and Kyle. Because Brody literally took everything away from Kyle every time he tried to do something, he jerked it out from under him, and never gave it to him. Then at the right moment, he let Kyle could start doing his stuff, and it was amazing of what the reaction and how that match felt do it, because I literally couldn’t stop watching it. It was that good.”