Jim Ross discusses the infamous Brawl Out altercation that occurred in AEW last year.
The Hall of Famer spoke on this topic during the latest episode of his Grillin JR podcast, where he emphasizes the importance of defusing a hot situation as soon as possible. Ross recalled his time in WWE as the head of talent relations and explained how he would have handled the situation between CM Punk and The Elite.
My protocol would be to get all the involved parties into a room and settle it and settle it as quickly as soon after it happened as you possibly could and communicate. That’s hard to do. Sometimes, guys have their feelings hurt, or they’re angry, or they feel like they have an issue. I’d say, you know, getting the crew together that’s involved in this atrocity is what I would try to accomplish and talk it out.
Ross continued…
Talk it out and keep cooler heads should prevail, and communicate. As simple as that. Boils down to that, quite frankly, at the end of the day, how well do we communicate on this matter? You want to do it while it’s still hot. You want to do it while it’s still fresh in everybody’s mind and let people express themselves in a civil and professional way. Because, you know, [Bill Watts] told me years ago, there’s more than one right way to do a wrestling angle or storyline, and I believe that. So, you know, everybody’s got their cause. Everybody’s got their reasons for doing what they did. Whether the results are right on the money or not, or what have you, I don’t know. It’s the individual who’s looking at it.
Ross later explains the importance of communication in these tense situations and says that the main priority is to resolve the issue for the betterment of the company.
You got to communicate, you got to get everybody together and communicate, and when you leave, hopefully, you’ll have a resolve. Hopefully, you’ll have people prioritizing the company first. If any of these issues occur that don’t promote the company and make it better for the company, then you’re on the wrong road. The company has to come first. I said this many times to talents. We have to take care of the goose because this goose that we have access to lays golden eggs that we deposit in the bank. So to me, that’s the bottom line. Communication is the key thing, and doing so in a timely basis is also important.
Months later and Brawl Out continues to be a heavily discussed topic for AEW, especially now as reports of CM Punk’s return continue to surface. You can read the latest on the Second City Saint here.
At another point in the podcast Ross spoke about Dustin and Cody Rhodes potentially reuniting as a tag team. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)