Eli Drake Thinks Focus on In-Ring Action Over Characters and Story Is a Plague on the Wrestling Industry

– WrestlingInc.com recently interviewed Eli Drake last month. Below are some additional highlights.

Eli Drake on how he and his brothers always liked the talking best in wrestling: “My favorite part of wrestling was always the guys who could talk. My litmus test in a sense is my brothers, actually. My brothers always watched wrestling with me as a kid as I was growing up, but when I got into high school and they were in their 20’s, they kind of fell away a little bit until the Attitude Era came in, and at that point they’d say, ‘The best part’s the talking.’ And they were kind of right, like to me, the talking was always the best part, the wrestling was almost secondary.”

Eli Drake on telling a story and preferring the drama: “Like you have to be able to tell a good story. I didn’t care about a Dean Malenko; I’m sorry, Dean, I actually like you, you’re a nice guy personally, amazing worker in the ring, but it’s just boring if you can’t tell me a story… But if you can say something memorable and give me memorable moments, that’s something. So my favorite part of the industry was always the drama, the trash-talk, all that kind of stuff. And if you can throw in hard-hitting action on the back end of that, that’s amazing. But to rely only on that action and to not be able to bring it with any kind of character or anything like that, which I think is a plague in this business right now, sorry just speaking the truth, I think we’re doing the business a disservice and I think we’re doing the fans a disservice.”

Eli Drake on WWE not being able to fill arenas due to the lack of charismatic personalities to attract fans: “I think that’s why you look at a RAW or SmackDown live audience where they can’t fill the arenas or even the TV audiences where they can’t fill the hard camera side, Impact, [I can say the same]. I will say Ring of Honor is doing well, but they’re in their own niche group. They’re able to sell out Madison Square Garden, but they can’t do that every week, that’s a once-a-year-thing, that’s a WrestleMania-type thing. And that’s a testament to the business changing to where that niche group likes Cirque du Soleil stunts and dangerous moves and stuff like that. But the general audience, if you want to grow your audience you need to tell stories, you need to have characters, and that’s how you bring them in. That’s my favorite part of the business.”