William Regal drops knowledge in this interview

jono
jono Members Posts: 30,280 ✭✭✭✭✭
Usually stuff like this is posted in the News thread but it's so much stuff he's discussing it deserves it's own thread. For those that don't know Regal is a talent scout of WWE in conjunction with his on screen duties

I won't post the whole thing but I will post some excerpts.

First, on being technically proficient in wrestling he states:
Get up your own backside about what we are, but we’re an act. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s about connecting with your audience. It doesn’t matter how technically good you are, if nobody wants to watch you then you’re no good to anybody. Sometimes it’s not about how good somebody is. It’s whether they’ve got that connection with an audience. Sometimes, it’s about how technically good they are, they may not have that connection yet, but you can see by talking to them or spending time watching them that you can teach them that or they could learn that on their own if given the right opportunities or given the right structure.

On the subject of people not wanting guys to be successful:
anybody who thinks that people don’t want everybody to do well here is mental. If it was your money and had invested in somebody, you’d want it to payoff. That’s just a no-brainer. We get everybody to be as good as they can be. Whether they make it or not is a different thing and sometimes it’s out of your control.

On the "WWE Style" and "everyone looks the same":
it’s [the WWE style] a terrible myth that needs putting to bed about their being a WWE style. I’ve never bought into that because anybody that was any good here never had … did Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Triple H have the WWE style? They had their own style. Everybody that was any good here had their own style. Yes, there used to be somewhat of a genetic WWE style, but you don’t see those people on any of the shows anymore. They just don’t fit in, but that myth is still out there. If you watch out show now everybody looks different, whether it is NXT or the main roster. Nobody looks the same. There’s not genetic wrestlers anymore, which there was a lot of probably eight or nine years ago. I don’t think they watch a lot of the time. They just want to say stuff because they’ve got nothing else to talk about.
There’s another myth that’s out there that, “Oh, they just sign anybody that’s 6 foot, 4 inches. That’s absolutely not true. I’m not saying that it didn’t used to be like that, but in the last three years that we’ve been doing this it’s completely different with a new structure. If all of the athletes that come and try out … First of all, you get athletes that look the part, they’ve got great work ethic, but they all bring something else to the table but they all go through the exact same tryout as everybody else. At the end, if they’ve got no charisma they could have 10 gold medals hanging around their neck, they’re not going to get a job here.

On why some people don't get signed and others don't "make it":
There’s a lot more to being a WWE superstar than just being a wrestler. It’s a lot of people will say, “Oh, why are they not doing this for this fella,” but when Joe [Villa] asks him to do an interview at six in the morning they can’t be bothered. A lot of that goes into this that people don’t get. You have to understand what you’re getting into when you come here. You have to be ready to do everything that’s involved in it. It’s not just that 15 minutes in the ring. You find people who can do that, who have all of the talent, that are already out there and they fit in here great. Some people aren’t going to fit in because they want to fit into that close-minded stuff. You have to be open-minded to start with, and then you get all of these people to help you.
There’s a lot of that goes into it, but there’s also quality kinds of people that I know you can bring here and even if they’re not like that, they can be taught to be able to not only do everything that’s needed to be done out in front of the crowd, but could do it behind the curtains as well.

That’s a huge part in working for this company and some people just can’t do that and they don’t want to do it so they’re no use to anybody here. That’s what a lot of people don’t get sometimes. You can’t trust somebody to go and talk to a load of children at seven in the morning they’re no good to anybody here because that’s part of what we do. There’s a lot more to it.

I get that everyday. “You should be hiring this person.” OK well, you like that person, but I unfortunately know far too much about that person and if you knew about him you wouldn’t like him too much. Don’t think I don’t know about everything and everybody that’s going on because people can’t wait to tell you that.
There’s no set criterion. Just find what works. Sometimes people just don’t work out. Even people you’ve got high hopes for and they’ve got everything working for them, they get here but they’re too set in their ways. They want to do it their way. OK, but doing it your way works in front that crowd, but it won’t work in front of this crowd. You may think it, and we’ll give you the opportunity, go out and do it on some of the shows and it’s dying on its backside.

There was a fella a while ago, two years he was here and everybody thought he could be something. He just didn’t pan out. If you ask him it was all of our fault and not his. A lot more goes into this. Unfortunately, a lot of the fellas that are out there now, it doesn’t work out for whatever reasons. Sometimes they’ve got injuries and you can’t pass physicals or they’ve got background checks. None of my generation would have ever gotten hired if you had background checks.


It’s just the way it is. There’s no good worrying about it. There’s no good complaining about it. You just make it work. Back to that, always make it work. If you can’t hire people because they’ve got certain things then you can’t hire them. There’s being hired here and working now on this show that you would have never thought could have possible ever worked here. There are people on the main roster that are on the show now that would have never gotten a look here three years ago. Right or wrong, that’s easy for me to say.


http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/the-squared-circle/William-Regal-talks-in-depth-about-NXT-scouting-talent-for-WWE.html#7TjQUAr5ZBQLvQhy.99

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