– On a recent edition of his Nuclear Heat podcast (via WrestlingInc.com), Vince Russo discussed how the style of professional wrestling has changed in the US in recent years. According to Russo, it’s due to the new agents who lay out the matches who used to work the X-Division or cruiserweight style, which focuses more on the match and less on their characters. Below are some highlights and a video of Russo discussing the issue.
Russo on the X-Division in TNA and how the matches were laid out: “Slowly but surely, that one X-Division match would turn into two X-Division matches, and a lot of the old school agents really did not know how to lay out an X-Division match. So basically what the relied on was the talent laying out those matches. The agent would go to the X-Division talent and say ‘this is what we’re looking for, this is the finish we need, ‘ and let the talent lay out the match.”
Russo on how those types of agents and wrestlers are now the agents for the heavyweight wrestlers in WWE now: “Some of them have become agents. Shane Helms was more or less an X-Division guy who is now agenting some of the heavyweight matches. He’s bringing the knowledge of what he knows to the traditional wrestling matches, so the traditional matches are becoming more like X-Division matches. … Jamie Noble was an X-Divsion wrestler and that’s the way he was trained. He’s now bringing that over to the more traditional matches.”
