During an interview with Love Wrestling, Gentleman Jervis spoke on how he draws inspiration from both Bret Hart and The Rock. Here’s what he had to say:
You know, the Rock – when I was, maybe I was 12 years old, my mother took me to meet the Rock. My mom didn’t really think much of it, you know, ‘oh, we’re going to go meet a wrestler.’ When we got to – it was a card shop called BC Sports Collectibles – and when we got to the front of the line, my mom, she looked at me she goes ‘there he is! Oh my gosh!’ I was like ‘mum! He’s electrifying! You’ve been electrified!’ She was like, ‘oh, my goodness.’ It was this thing, this charisma. You can’t explain it. You can’t really put a tag on it. You can’t capture it, but man you know what it is! You know what it is when you feel it. That was a special moment for me because I thought ‘he is not even doing anything. It’s just sitting in a chair, electrifying!’ Well, he was doing something, but he was making it look easy, I’ll tell you that! So that moment really stuck with me. And, of course, he was always a very entertaining performer.
Now, I will say that with Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart, he always seemed to have a moral center, a strong moral center. I think that when I saw the Wrestling with Shadows documentary, it really, you know – I understood that there were weird – there was a weird situation that had happened and there was some uncomfortable stuff. I didn’t really get it at the time, I was young. But, I remember seeing that documentary and I remember there was a part where he talked about the art of professional wrestling, and I had never understood wrestling like this, but he said the magic – there was a reason that you don’t see guys with bruises on their face the next day, even though they were kicked full blast the night before. And he said, ‘that’s the art of professional wrestling is making it look like you’re hurting your opponent without actually hurting them.’ I always took that to heart, because the way I see it is I have been a fighter in my days.
I’ve (done) jujitsu and also karate at a younger age and amateur wrestling. I’ve had competition where you’re actually trying to overpower somebody and defeat them. But professional wrestling, in my opinion is there’s more of an art form to it. Because you’re not just fighting, but you’re also communicating the story and the emotion of why you’re fighting, which often is more important than the actual fighting itself. So I would say that that that sort of thing with Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart, he always fights in such a way that he doesn’t want to hurt his opponent. So I thought I would take that to the next level, and rather than making it look like I was hurting someone and then not actually hurting them, I thought ‘what if I don’t hurt them at all and I still defeat them?
Credit: Love Wrestling. H/T 411Mania.