Scott Fishman of The Miami Herald spoke with Scott Steiner at the recent Florida Supercon event. Here are some highlights from their interview:
The current state of wrestling:
“The ‘PG era’ blows. The best time in wrestling was with the nWo and the Monday Night War between WCW and WWE. You had competition. Now there is no competition. I feel bad for the guys and the wrestlers coming up now. They are slotted into a character that sometimes they can’t even do. Most of the time it’s bull****, and it sucks. I wouldn’t want to do it. You have a stupid character to do, but if you don’t do it, you don’t have a job.
“You need competition for a business to truly thrive. Look at Vince [McMahon’s] numbers since he bought WCW. Then again he just lost like $400 million, projected to lose $50 million this year. So you couldn’t predict that after he bought WCW and doing 5’s and 6’s on the ratings scale.”
The WWE Network:
“I don’t think it took off the way they wanted. I’ll just say that. All the social media and other things, a lot of it is bull****. It doesn’t mean you’re going to draw or people are going to see you. You look at Charlie Sheen and then how many Twitter followers he had there and on Facebook. Then he tried to capitalize on it with a tour, and nobody came to watch him. Just because you have Twitter followers and Facebook doesn’t mean a whole lot and [doesn’t mean] people are going to pay to see you. A lot of that is misjudged. Just because you have people on their phone or Internet doesn’t mean they are going to pay. Same for the Network. I think they misjudged the popularity of it.
“Just because somebody follows you don’t mean they are going to pay for it. A lot of people are misjudging the popularity of people or characters. It’s bull****. I think they did the same thing. A lot of those wrestlers have a lot of Twitter followers, but all that combined they should be able to get $9.99 for the Network. They found out they don’t pay…When do you concede that you failed? They live in their own little box and think they are all geniuses. So when are they going to concede that they are not as smart as they think they are?”
