In an interview with Fox Sports Australia, WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart discussed modern wrestling and stated the following:
“I saw something just a few days ago in a wrestling match where all the girls were lying in the middle of the ring together and they were doing the big belly flops on all of them. And you think they would get away from that kind of phony rehearsed kind of wrestling? Who wants to watch that? I don’t want to watch that, I know my kids don’t want to watch that.”
“I find a lot of the wrestlers today are like, when they land where they land, they realise 30 seconds later that they’re in the wrong spot, and they start wiggling all the way across the ring to get in the right position. That’s a fail. You get an F in my wrestling academy when you do stuff like that.”
“And when these guys dive over the top rope onto the 20 wrestlers on the floor – they’ve gotta stop doing that. It’s just not real … and with the chops, and everybody chopping themselves. What a bunch of baloney. Nobody ever won a match with a chop. All the wooing. It’s really taking away from the beauty and the art of great wrestling.”
“There’s a lot of great wrestlers out there that can deliver great matches. But there’s so many wrestlers out there that are subpar in my opinion, that don’t know what they’re doing out there. And they allow themselves to rely on things like chops, which I think is sort of like cheap heat – you get a reaction, but what’s your reaction? You’re whipping a guy across the chest with your hand? Okay, so you’re hurting some guy for real, for some stupid reason. And the crowd sort of reacts to it.”
“In my understanding of pro wrestling, anytime anyone does anything to you that hurts, for real – chopping, putting blisters on your chest when you go to your room or bed, anytime anyone does things to you for real, they’re in the wrong business. They’re doing it wrong. Because you’re not supposed to get hurt. You’re not supposed to come back to your dressing room that night, or to your hotel room and have a big lump on your head and a black eye and your teeth are knocked out. That’s Bill Goldberg wrestling. That’s not how it’s done.”
