Paul London recently appeared on the Insight With Chris Van Vliet podcast, where he discussed his break from wrestling and his views on the current state of the industry. The former WWE Tag Team Champion expressed his belief that social media has negatively impacted the business and contributed to his burnout.
“I think the social media thing was a part of it, too,” London said. “I was doing the work, delivering and doing all this bullsh*t, you know, jobs that you hate, but you have a kind of freedom to do whatever you want to do. I like putting myself in situations where people don’t know everything about me. That’s why social media is such a silly tool, because for me, it is just that, it’s a tool. It’s a tool to promote things. For the most part, it’s an edited illusion, right? Everyone living their best lives and we’re so happy and all this stuff.”
London went on to explain how this “edited life” has hurt the wrestling business, suggesting that the “Speaking Out” movement, while necessary, also removed barriers that allowed unqualified people to enter the industry. “When I talked about it hurting the wrestling business, I don’t know what came first, it might have been the Speaking Out thing when there was cancelations all over the place, and a lot of those were warranted, but I think it put a net of fear over everybody,” he said. “So it did allow voices to be heard that should have been heard in the first place. But it also didn’t just open the doors, it just took the doors off the hinges.”
He continued, criticizing the lack of standards in modern wrestling. “So now anybody can be a wrestler who isn’t a wrestler. Now, I mean, you just stumble upon just whoever it’s like pro wrestler, ‘I do the graps!’ Shut the f*ck up. What are you talking about? So to allow these people to play the business has to compromise itself and look sh*ttier and phonier, more cooperative and more planned, more rehearsed, and it’s just unwatchable. It gets to where I can’t watch any anything on TV.”
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