Alex Hammerstone opens up about fan reception to long title reigns.
The current MLW World Champion discussed this topic during an interview on the In The Weeds podcast, where he referred to this timeline as the “ADD Era” of wrestling due to fans wanting to always see the “next guy” capture gold. The Hammer recalls a recent showdown he had against Jacob Fatu, the man he took the title from, and how fans were cheering for him to win it back just because it would be something new.
When I wrestled Fatu a couple of months ago, they were ready to see a new champion. They were kind of more in his corner than they were mine. I don’t know if we’re going to see a repeat of that (at MLW Never Say Never). We’re living in the ADD era. People want a quick Instagram reel or TikTok. It’s hard to convince someone to sit down and pay attention to something. It’s the exact same way in wrestling. No matter how much they love someone or want them to be the champion, if you’ve had it for more than three shows, they’re excited about the next guy winning it. I don’t know if we’re going to see that vibe takeover the arena this weekend. It’s very much a possibility they are excited at the prospect of a new champ that the crowd shifts in his favor. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with in the past.
Hammerstone would later be asked about how he keeps his reign feeling fresh, as he’s defended the MLW World title 16-times since winning it back in 2021. He says that having stories that mean something, shifting character traits, and having a variety of matches could certainly be beneficial.
To a certain extent, fans are always going to get burnt out. There are some people, no matter if you feed someone filet mignon every night of the week but eventually they’re going to say ‘I want a cheeseburger.’ No matter how good it is, eventually, people crave something different for the sake of craving something different. Sometimes, once they get it, they realize, ‘Oh crap, I should have kept my mouth shut.’ People will root for an underdog in wrestling and once they win, they’re like, ‘Oh, we had fun cheering for them but we didn’t expect this to happen, and now we don’t really know what we want.’ That being said, I think it comes down to making sure there is someone there interesting to oppose them. No matter how good or talented someone is at the top, if they don’t have someone meaningful to build stories with, it gets difficult. If you can create something people are invested in and people want to keep seeing that champion fight, that really helps. Then, it’s finding different ways to keep it fresh. Different types of matches, things of that nature, shifts in the character. It is an uphill battle these days. Back in the day, people only saw the wrestling when they saw the wrestling. Even the most available stuff, Monday Night Raw, was once a week and you didn’t see wrestling anymore. Now, you watch wrestling on the night it happens, and you see the review the next day and then highlights on Twitter after that, then the recap the next day on YouTube. By the time you’re to the next week, you’ve been watching that show over and over, and you’re already sick of what happened on that show. It’s a different era, but little things like that can make it a little more interesting.
Hammerstone will defend the MLW World Championship next against Alex Kane at the July 8th Never Say Never event in Philadelphia. Check out his full interview below.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
