Jonathan Gresham: If You Take Rules Away From Pro Wrestling, There’s No Story
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
Ring of Honor superstar Jonathan Gresham recently spoke with Sports Illustrated, where he spoke about the importance of rules in the world of wrestling, technical wrestling, and what his goals are with The Foundation. You can check out some of the results below:
The importance of rules being enforced:
When you take rules away from professional wrestling, there is no story, no heels or faces. We need rules for people to get up in arms over something. Every sport, fans yell at refs for missing technicalities of rules. Wrestling doesn’t have that anymore. It’s so easy to tell stories with technical wrestling. That goes deeper than fireworks or cool moves or title changes. Everything is so instant, so this is a different flavor of ice cream and a different identity for Ring of Honor.
Technical wrestling having more variety than some think:
Some people think technical wrestling is slow and boring, but there are so many different styles of technical wrestling. There is the swift and quick style of lucha libre, like Negro Navarro and Blue Demon Jr., as opposed to the Karl Gotch style that is popular in Japan, which is mixed in with Antonio Inoki hard strikes. The British have the Lancashire style and the Americans have the American style mixed in with mixed martial arts. This tournament opened a lot of eyes about technical wrestling.
His goals with The Foundation and technical wrestling:
Our goal is to restore honor to the whole industry, and that’s not exclusive to Ring of Honor—it’s all over the world. I am the Foundation, but so is everyone else that sees the injustices and suppression of the pure technical wrestler throughout the industry. The pure technical wrestler has been suppressed for so many years that you only see one or two at a promotion, like Timothy Thatcher at NXT or Zack Sabre Jr. or Minoru Suzuki in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
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