There are plenty of choices for modern-day wrestling fans to take in their desired flavor of pro wrestling. One promotion on the El Rey Network that has some fans captivated still has others frustrated with their booking decisions.
Dave Meltzer was recently a guest on The Jim Cornette Experience where he spent some time discussing Cornette’s disapproval of some of modern indie wrestling’s more hokey spots. Cornette is especially not a fan of PWG.
Jim Cornette mentioned the invisible grenade, slow motion, along with other outlandish spots and voiced his disapproval. One spot he disapproved of especially was Joey Ryan’s “Penisplex” spot but Meltzer came to Ryan’s defense stating the move is popular with fans.
While Meltzer and Cornette might have disagreed to an extent, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter writer went into more detail about Joey Ryan’s controversial spot and transitioned it into voicing his own disapproval for Lucha Underground.
“If I’m running Lucha Underground, I will say this — I’ve got a television show I would not want Joey Ryan doing that spot (the Penisplex) on television to me because it would go against what I would want my television to be” Meltzer said.
“Lucha Underground — it pains me because there’s the potential of Lucha Libre with the great workers they have in Mexico right now in this country is very big. And the talent on Lucha Underground some of it is absolutely incredible and they are strangled by their booking. Because they’ve got bookers who have no clue that don’t understand that people when they wanna watch a wrestling soap opera really don’t — you know they want to be able to believe to a certain degree — killing off characters and all of the crazy stuff that they do. It’s like, it’s cool to a degree but it’s like — you know and making the first women’s world champion of men and all that — which you know hurt their ratings for a while but they’ve rebounded from it since.”
“But the whole thing is like they’ve limited their up-side potential based on the fact that they think they’re not a wrestling show and they’re doing something different. If they were just a crappy indie group that had no talent and they were doing any of this stuff I’d be like, ‘okay do whatever you want’ — you actually have potential and you’re strangling your potential. So Lucha Underground kinda bothers me because of that.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The Jim Cornette Experience with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription
I actually enjoyed the Corny-Meltzer debate on PWG. They disagreed with each other, but it’s not like they came away despising each other on a personal level.