Tommy Dreamer On Criticism Of Older Wrestlers In Main Event Spots, His Pitch For Defeating Tessa Blanchard For Impact Title

Tommy Dreamer joined the Impact Wrestling media conference ahead of No Surrender on Saturday, and he discussed a variety of topics, including older wrestlers being featured in main event spots, his pitch for winning the Impact World title, and much more. Here are some highlights (via Wrestling Inc.)

Tommy Dreamer on criticism of older wrestlers being featured in top spots: “I’m not a social justice warrior, but I see a lot of people straight up hating that I’m getting a world title shot for the fact that I’m 50 years old. And they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s so much youth’ and all that stuff. Okay, number one: do you not like me because I’m going to be 50 on my birthday? Like, I’m sorry I’m 50 and I’m still wrestling? But there should never be that about anything. Like, I’ve even said that it’s a gift and it’s something that Rich [Swann] wanted to do. So how do you begrudge someone? David Arquette, someone said, ‘Hey! You’re a big fan. Do you want to wrestle for the world title?’ And that was met with such hatred in this dark day in professional wrestling. Yet here’s a guy… Like, if someone said to me or D’Lo [Brown], ‘Hey, there’s a football game on Sunday. It’s called the Super Bowl. Would you like to play one down?’ I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t say yes.”

On Edge winning the Royal Rumble: “You look at Edge, who’s two years younger than I. What a great story, you know, for him to win the Royal Rumble. And then the moment he won it, you have all these people like, ‘He shouldn’t have won it. He’s too old.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, you loved it before he won it!’ Or my favorite is, everyone was rejoicing Victoria was in it. Victoria’s older than me!”

On his pitch for defeating Tessa Blanchard for the Impact World title: “In Impact Wrestling, as you know I had a great relationship with Tessa Blanchard, and I was kind of her mention,” Dreamer said. “And I wanted to do, this is for old wrestling fans, Mr. Wrestling #2 vs. Magnum TA. And I wanted to actually turn heel on her, and beat her for the title. Then transition it to somebody else. But I wanted to turn on her and be total, total heel. It didn’t happen, but I think it would’ve been pretty damn good if it did because you would’ve had people hating on me and my biggest heat was, ‘You turned on a woman? Who trusted you?’ I thought it would’ve been pretty damn good, but it didn’t happen.”