Ken Anderson Explains What Frustrates Him About WWE

PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 08: Ken Anderson, Professional Wrestler, TNA speaks onstage during Destination America's 'TNA Impact Wrestling' panel at Discovery Communications' 2015 Winter Television Critics Association press tour at the Langham Hotel on January 8, 2015 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Ken Anderson, formerly Mr. Kennedy in WWE, appeared on Steve Austin’s podcast to talk about various topics. Here are the highlights (transcript courtesy of Wrestling Inc):

What frustrates him about WWE:

“The thing that’s frustrating to me is that it seems to me that guys are told, and girls are told, exactly what to do paint-by-numbers,” Anderson said. “It’s not ‘just go out there and try some stuff and see what works and what doesn’t work’ and it’s just people are handed a script and told, ‘say this exactly verbatim.’ That’s what’s frustrating to me. I wish more people were given the opportunity to fail on their own or succeed on their own. That’s the only thing that really frustrates me.”

Differences between WWE and TNA:

“When I was at the WWE, it felt like, at least towards the end, that everybody was walking around on eggshells. Everybody was worried that ‘tomorrow might be my last day if I say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, I’m going to get fired.’ When I got to TNA… And I think that’s the sort of management style of WWE. It’s the way they always wanted everybody to be sort of on edge. When I got to TNA, it felt like, ‘go out there and do your job and do it to the best of your ability.’ Cool. There weren’t any politics or anything like that in TNA and the biggest thing, the biggest difference, for me was Eric Bischoff was a big part of me coming to TNA. Like, and when I got there, he said, ‘I know that they’re sort of hamstringing you, to a degree, in WWE and telling you, ‘this is what you have to say – this is when you say it,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to give you bulletpoints. I don’t care how you get there, just here’s this main point we want to get to. You just figure out how Ken Anderson is going to get us there.’”