WWE Hall of Famer and former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura recently appeared on the Talk Is Jericho podcast to discuss today’s wrestling industry, and why he believes that the lack of rules and rule enforcement makes the business less intriguing than it was in the past. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says it is hard for him to get into wrestling today because there are no rules or enforcement of rules:
“When I watch WWE today, and it took me a while to determine why wrestling today, to me, doesn’t have any intrigue whatsoever to it. And I’ll tell you why. There’s no rules. Now when I say that, here’s what I mean. In my day, when you broke a rule, you could lose a match. In my day, when you broke a rule, the referee would make you break up the hold. In my day, the rules meant something. If a guy was thrown out over the top rope, that was considered so dangerous…that was a disqualification. And with those rules, it allowed you to get heat. Because when you’d win by breaking the rules, people were angry legitimately.”
How things wrestlers do today would have getting them DQ’d back in his day:
“I could start the match off, hit my opponent, knock him out of the ring and run his head right into the steel post, and the match goes on. Now in my day, you’d be disqualified for that. You had to hide it. You had to be creative to cheat. Today, the performers don’t need any creativity. They can blatantly cheat because again there’s no rules. And that’s why I can’t watch. There’s nothing there that intrigues me.”
How this effects heels in wrestling:
“A heel can’t get my respect because he’s not showing me the ability to perform and break the rules and get away with it, because there’s no rules to get away with. And the babyface, well, they start off, they don’t even to bother to show they’re a superior wrestler. It’s beating the guy right in the head and cutting meat right from the opening bell. When do you see a hold? When do you see a guy go back to a hold? I guess the major difference is, in my day, it was still wrestling as a basis. Today, street fighting is the basis because there’s nothing you can do that can disqualify you. If I went out and kicked the guy right in the nuts, would I get disqualified?”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestleZone)