Billy Gunn: Nowadays, Nobody Knows How To Work And They’re Lazy

Billy Gunn started his career in 1989 and has remained active and on television consistently for over three decades.

Today, Gunn works for AEW as a coach. Like many veterans, Gunn has an old school mentality when it comes to the business.

“Nowadays, nobody knows how to work,” Gunn said on ARWP after explaining that he doesn’t teach crazy stuff because everyone does it nowadays. “They don’t know how to work in general. We get it, back in the 80s, isn’t going to work now because they’ve taken it so far to the extreme that you have to have very good basic storytelling for me to follow along and see somebody actually wrestle. For me to advertise a match, ‘Me and you are going to wrestle.’ Nobody wants to see that because nobody understands because there is no conflict. People don’t want to just see two people wrestle, except for people who wrestle and think they’re going to mark out for you. They know the moves that you’re doing, the people do not. They know some of them, but they don’t know the setup to everything. The only conflict we need is, ‘You slapped my wife on the butt.’ Now, there is some tension there. Now, I want to see Billy beat you up for touching his wife. These are all my perceptions of what we need to do. There has to be a reason for us to fight. There has to be a reason for somebody to like me and hate you. Just because we’re going to wrestle, I don’t understand how you get into that. Sure, there are some people that get into it, but I don’t want you. I want everybody on the planet to see. That’s a star.”

Gunn continued, “[The cowd] wants to be involved somehow. Me doing a bunch of wrestling moves and begging you to cheer for me isn’t a thing. That’s not my thing to do. This sounds egotistical, but you bought a ticket to watch me. Why am I going to beg you to cheer for me? You either cheer for me or you don’t. I can do the same thing with the way I move my body or a look, but these kids don’t do that because they’re lazy. They just want to go, ‘I’m going to do this move. I want everybody to pop for me first. They pop and then I do it.’ If I stand there, look around, and get energy, then they know because it’s more natural.”

Gunn was part of D-Generation X during the Attitude Era, one of the hottest acts in wrestling at the time.

“In the Attitude Era, I had so much energy and all I said was, “I have two words for you,’ and that was it, but there was so much energy. It’s the same thing. They all know it’s coming, so they get ready. At the end, they all blow, and it’s so loud. To this day it’s loud and not old. It can be done the same way with wrestling moves, everybody just doesn’t know how to work and they’re lazy,” he said.

He continued, “All these guys doing all these dives and other stuff. Sure, there is a place for it, but let’s work to get to it instead of right when you start, you start doing it all. They are so athletic that the people can’t follow along. They just know that at the end of all the moving around, when you stop moving for a second, they go, ‘Yay! Woo!’ Is it big in AEW? Yes. Is it big in WWE? Yes. It’s big everywhere because that’s what they feel everybody needs. We’re not taking the time to work our way back into it. We just go from 50 to 100.”

Gunn has been off AEW television since The Acclaimed (Max Caster & Anthony Bowens) started having issues and officially split.

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