Aron Stevens has stepped away from the business and had his swan song, but will he ever ‘retire’ from wrestling?
WrestleZone recently spoke with NWA’s Aron Stevens about advertising his “Swan Song” in the National Wrestling Alliance, with many believing he was retiring from in-ring competition for good. Stevens has competed sporadically since then, and he says there’s a place for him in the business, whether he’s competing or entertaining in a different way.
“I say it all the time, right? I don’t get retired, I get rewired. And I mean, look, it’s obviously a good thing to have me around the wrestling business. Obviously a good thing to have me around the NWA. Someone has to make some sense of everything. Someone has to steer the ship. Okay, someone has to take the most devastating tag team, Blunt Force Trauma, to the NWA tag team titles and revamp tag team wrestling as we know it. You see, again — here’s just a little plug and then I’m gonna get back into this — but the NWA are approaching wrestling from a way that it used to be approached in the 80s and 90s in particular. And it is the new school athleticism, the moves, the drama, but we create characters, we create personalities,” Stevens said.
Stevens then pointed to the work Jeff Jarrett is currently doing with All Elite Wrestling as a good example of how a performer can pull the crowd in and make them invest in the match. Stevens said he doesn’t know Jarrett very well, but he can see how manipulating a crowd in the right way can lead to longevity in the wrestling business.
“That tag match with Jeff Jarrett that he was able to have in AEW a few weeks ago [teaming with Jay Lethal against The Acclaimed on January 4], you cannot deny how he’s able to just take a crowd and manipulate the crowd. And I don’t mean that in a malicious way, I mean as a performer, you are able to let your guard down enough and say, ‘This is the best thing for the match.’ And if you do that, the audience will let their guard down enough to emotionally invest in it,” Stevens explained. “And if you’re out there, and everyone’s just trying to look good, and just get their moves in, it doesn’t make sense. And you know what, it’s great to watch the athleticism, but tell me a story. And there are some people in AEW, men and women, who are over and who are doing great stuff, in WWE, right? But again, consistency. Across the board consistency in booking. How do you tell a story? Let’s all have fun, let’s take the audience on a three-month journey, on whatever storyline it is, or a six-month journey, or a year journey, and let’s just let’s do that. So that’s why when I [call NWA] the tomato soup and grilled cheese of wrestling, that’s what it is. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.”
Read More: Aron Stevens On 2013 Money In The Bank Win: It Stands The Test Of Time, Everyone Worked Selflessly
