205 Live Superstar TJP was a guest on the Wrassle Rap podcast and gave his take on Brock Lesnar, WrestleMania 35, and also star ratings. Highlights appear below.
(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)
On WrestleMania 35, Brock Lesnar, & Rating Matches:
Someone asked me the other day, ‘Would you rather see Becky [Lynch]/Ronda [Rousey] main event WrestleMania or Brock [Lesnar]/Seth [Rollins]?’ Personally, I want to see Brock/Seth and it’s nothing against Becky/Ronda. I think they’re gonna have an amazing match. I actually know Becky and Ronda way better than I know Brock and Seth. I know Seth a little but, but I don’t know Brock at all. I said that I would want that because I really like every match that Brock is having, everything.
We live in a world of narratives. We look at wrestling in a way to rate it because that’s how we look at life. We look at everything like, ‘How can I rate it? How can I have an opinion on it? But, first let me see what everyone else’s opinions are, so I can say the same thing and get the same clicks.
I don’t think about rating a Brock match. You think about Brock and it’s like, ‘How many people want Brock to lose?’ There’s an irrational hatred for it or love for it. There’s no in between and that passion is so strong, you don’t even apply a narrative to it … it’s emotional to people.
At Survivor Series 2016, when he was wrestling Goldberg, the first match, the boys in the locker room were jumping on tables watching it. These guys were in the locker room with us and we were so emotionally invested and emotionally connected to that match. Brock has a way of bringing that magic out. It’s like real magic. You never look at that and think, ‘I’ve got to rate this like Okada and Kenny.’ That’s real magic. You affect people on an emotional level so deeply that they legitimately want you to succeed or fail. He’s an unexpected wrench in the machine of cogs in the narrative world that we live in. Of course, we can create narratives about him and what he’s doing, ‘Oh, he’s a part-timer, this or that,’ but he’s the only entity in almost any entertainment I can think of…he forces you to not adhere to the narrative because you’re so emotionally wrapped up in whatever he’s doing. You hear his name. You hear his song and you’re roped in and that’s what I love. I look at wrestling that way. I don’t grade wrestling. I don’t think A,B,C,D, or F. I’ve always looked at it as pass or fail….you either affect people like he does or you don’t and if you don’t, to me, you’re failing as a performer. If their reality is not suspended enough for them to sit back and say, ‘Well, it can be like this or I’m gonna place this on a list of some sort,’ you didn’t affect them enough.
On Star Ratings:
I can’t buy a car, or a house, or feed my family on how many five star matches I’ve had. You can’t even get a wrestling job for that. That’s never come up. I’ve never sat in a wrestling office and they said, ‘Well, we’d like to offer you a three year contract, but the amount of 3.5 star matches you’ve had is staggering, so we’re gonna have to drop the offer a little bit to reflect it.’ No, that’s not real. They look at where you’ve been, and how long you’ve been doing it, and if you’re safe or not.
Readers may listen to Wrassle Rap in full below:
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