Former WCW Executive On Why Age Doesn’t Matter In Wrestling

Former WCW Executive On Why Age Doesn’t Matter In Wrestling

A former WCW executive has talked about age in wrestling, and why it means less nowadays if the character still resonates with fans.

In recent years, it has became apparent that WWE have an ageing roster. Since the “oldest Royal Rumble match” in January, fans have been debating what it means to be a wrestling veteran.

According to Eric Bischoff, age doesn’t really matter. Speaking on the 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff claimed that the idea of a “washed-up wrestler” was popularised during the Monday Night Wars.

Using Sons of Anarchy as an example of a show with a cast much older than the target demographic, Bischoff pointed out that there is more to a relatable character than just age.

Explaining that it takes a long time for younger wrestlers to establish themselves, Bischoff argued that sometimes older talent can give the “rub” to an up-and-comer.

Here are the full quotes:

“I think the whole idea of age is, I mean it’d be worth a discussion and maybe even a show specifically about this topic. I think it all started with the Monday Night Wars. I think it all started when Vince McMahon, thinking that Hulk Hogan no longer had any value, that Randy Savage no longer had any value, that Roddy Piper no longer had any value, that Ric Flair no longer had any value, that so many of the established big names were, just kind of like it was time to put them out to pasture.

“You could go all the way back to Warrior and Hulk Hogan in WWF when Vince wanted to put the belt on Warrior because he felt that Hogan was done. When was that, 1991? 92? When Hogan was 37, 38, whatever he was. Once part of that roster came to WCW and started kicking Vince McMahon’s ass on a regular basis, what did Vince do? He started framing and contextualizing aforementioned talent as being too old and washed up and has-beens. Billionaire Ted skits, where Vince made fun of the age of a lot of the performers that we were using to beat his ass. That kind of perpetuated throughout the peripheral wrestling media and age became a subject.”

“Look at some of the biggest hits, and I’m going to pull a couple that are older now because I’ve kind of analyzed them over the years but they still hold up. Sons of Anarchy on FX. The average age of the cast on Sons of Anarchy was probably 55 years old. It had the strongest 18-49-year-old male demos of any show in its time period at that time, or close to it.

“So I think when people who don’t know f**k all about television, really, because they’ve never really done it start talking about granular aspects of television like the relative age of the characters compared to the target audience, they run themselves into a ditch because they don’t know what they’re talking about. The audience doesn’t feel the same way about the age of talent as the people who write about it do.”

“If you look at the other end of it, it takes young talent, and I’m talking about guys that are under 30 and under 35 years old, it takes them a good 5, 8, 10 years to really connect with the audience in a way where they’re really viable, consistently high performing characters. It takes a while. The young talent that everybody talks about grooming, yes absolutely, you need to bring that talent up. You need to brush them up against a Sting.

“You need to be Darby Allin getting that rub from Sting in AEW. That’s how you utilize guys like Sting because the audience is still invested in Sting. AEW just signed Big Show. I said what’? What the hell? But they did. Why? It was a good calculation. Big Show is a name with a ton of freaking equity. Now, will they use him in the ring? Probably not, and if they do it’ll be the occasional thing, which is fine.”

The current WWE Champion, Bobby Lashley, is 44 years old, with the previous titleholder, The Miz, winning the championship at 40 years old.

WWE understand that their roster is aging and have put measures in place to find younger stars. The WWE Performance Center recently approved a new rule stating that unless the new recruit already has name value, no new WWE signing can be over 30 years old.

While AEW have their fair share of older competitors on the roster, they’re often used to elevate younger stars, such as MJF and Hangman Page.

Quotes courtesy of Fightful.

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3 years ago by Sanchez Taylor

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