Jim Ross says MJF is right about the locker room, and that the wrestlers who cannot stop working people are the majority rather than the exception.
MJF told Bleacher Report ahead of All In that young wrestlers make a mistake seeking out veterans, and that 99 percent of them do not have your best interests at heart because anyone better than them is taking food off their plate. Conrad Thompson read the quote to Ross on Grilling JR.
“I can’t disagree with him. It’s a con man’s business,” Ross said.
His reason was about who is actually in the room.
“The boys that can’t turn the I’m working you meter off are more prevalent than those that are not. So con men, always working. They believe their own s***,” Ross said.
He allowed that MJF may be sharpening the point for effect.
“Is MJF prone, like the boys, to be a little over the top to make his point heard and make his point remembered? Sure, no different to anybody else in this crazy business,” he said. “But it’s built on the premise of being a showbiz presentation. People are always trying to feather their own nest, protect their own spot. Can’t say any of that’s wrong, but the manner in which they do it can be very distasteful.”
Where Ross went further than MJF was in what he thinks the habit costs the people who never break it.
“I hope some of these new kids that come in the wrestling business don’t long and yearn to understand the art of the con. It don’t last forever,” he said.
His evidence is the convention circuit.
“If you don’t believe me, come to some of those wrestling convention events, and you’ll see them all over the room. There they are, and this is their primary source of income? Are you s***ting me?” Ross said. “You didn’t save your money. How many Rolexes do you think you had to buy? Two, three, new cars. You live that lifestyle, man.”
The convention point is a real one about how the business ages. Wrestlers from the territory era and the 1990s largely worked without guaranteed contracts, pensions, or long-term earnings, and the signing circuit is what a lot of them are living on now. Ross’ argument is that the men who spent their careers working everyone around them are disproportionately the ones sitting behind those tables.
He finished on the part he says nobody talks about.
“Most of the guys that can’t get away from the con, what that does, it destroys relationships,” Ross said. “That’s why wrestlers have such a high rate of divorce. Be frank about it.”
Ross is the only one of the three to agree with the number. Eric Bischoff said on 83 Weeks that the figure is closer to 50 or 60 percent and used Bill Goldberg’s early WCW run as an example of veterans crowding a rising star with advice that suited themselves. JBL, sitting in on Something to Wrestle With, said 99 percent was too high but that the underlying advice was sound, and that the mistake is asking in the first place. Ross did not quibble with the arithmetic at all.
He also comes at it from a different chair than the other two. Bischoff ran WCW and JBL worked the locker room. Ross spent years running talent relations for WWE, which meant negotiating with the people he is describing and then dealing with them afterwards, and the convention circuit he points at is one he still works himself.
MJF made the original comments to Bleacher Report ahead of All In: London, where he entered the Casino Gauntlet second and did not win it. Andrade El Idolo took the match to earn a future AEW World Championship shot.
