Doc Gallows On How WWE Internally Feels About AEW: "You Feel The Heat"
Impact Wrestling star Doc Gallows was on a recent episode of the MCW Cast. Gallows discussed the changing tide AEW has brought, and if he sees WWE changing to combat AEW's rise.
"I got a lot of friends at WWE. I'm glad WWE exists because that's what I like as a fan," Gallows said. "They're gonna do it their way, and that's gonna be it. We just saw that with NXT. They killed their own model because the guy in charge didn't like it. A serious change. We just signed those massive contracts, and then the pandemic hit and they did all those cuts, but the reason the contracts got so huge to begin with was to fight off AEW. It did not work, and even guys who got 'fired' went and got hotter or left on their own and got hotter. It helped."
Gallows was then asked if he sees WWE taking a fall in the next five to 10 years. Gallows explained how fans are having an effect on where WWE and AEW are heading.
"Who knows because the WWE is the face of what pro wrestling is. They're always gonna grab the casual fan," Gallows noted. "I like Roman Reigns, personally, a lot. I was reading an interview where he was basically saying, 'We're gonna do it our way. We want the casual fan,' and I guess on the inside, you can say what you want, but you feel the heat from them, they feel like everyone who doesn't watch them, we're just this weird hardcore fanbase, but I think what you're looking over is the fact the weird hardcore fanbase, all of us, we're growing larger, and larger and larger. And now, you and I who grew up as fans as a kid, we have an entertainment dollar, and we want to spend it on wrestling. It doesn't have to be one thing."
Gallows spoke more on AEW and WWE's contrasting attitudes. Using both companies' differing use of legends as an example.
"They're not afraid to put some of these awesome veterans, legends on TV," Gallows pointed out. "WWE has just this entertainment mentality. I feel like wrestling has been on the fringe of that. They might say, 'Those guys, they're too old to be on TV,' but to us, as fans, we don't care about that.' You're gonna bring on the Four Horsemen and have them on television, huge fan. I think it's cool. It's the lineage of wrestling. It's the history of why we're all into it, and you're telling a story coming back to something from 20 years before. Seeing a team like FTR, that's a totally throwback and then being like, it would be cool if they had Tully Blanchard, and they do it."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit MCW Cast with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.