Al Snow recently spoke to The Roman Show at Coastal Championship Wrestling’s Breaking Chains event; you can watch the complete interview and read a few excerpts (transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com) below:
Al Snow comments on the women’s wrestling revolution, how women can be as strong of an attraction like the male wrestlers:
Even before [the Impact Wrestling Knockouts], when we were doing the [WWE] developmental in OVW, the women, which was Beth Phoenix, ODB, Katie Burchill, a lot of those women actually… they were the ones that carried the show and were the main event. In fact, I’m very proud to say that we had the very first women’s ladder match in OVW in Louisville, Kentucky for the WWE developmental between Beth Phoenix and Katie Burchill, and they tore the house down. It was more than often than not that the women carried the shows.
I’ve always believed that the women can be as strong of an attraction if done in the right manner and treated respectfully. And the women, and here’s the most important thing, and this isn’t a sexist remark: if the women continue to be women meaning that they don’t go in the ring and become guys with boobs. They need to perform and wrestle as adeptly as a man, as professionally as a man, as legitimately as a man, but they now still need to maintain that feminine quality and be a woman so they can be relatable to the women, and also to the men in the audience. There is a definable difference, and if they lose that intrisic thing–it’s no different than if you take a guy and he’s a character backstage, and he’s a character on the mic, but he gets in the ring and he’s just a wrestler in a pair of trunks… [throws up hands] well, that’s not what I bought. You sold me this guy and now that guy goes away, but the bell rings at the end of the match and he comes back. Well now here’s this attractive girl, who’s a girl, who’s a girl, who’s a girl, bell rings, just another wrestler. Now the bell rings again, she’s a girl again. That doesn’t work.
Snow comments on Ronda Rousey signing with the WWE and the obstacles she will face:
The biggest thing I think for her is that she’s coming… it’s not like Brock Lesnar; Brock Lesnar came from WWE and he went to UFC. And when he went in and lost his first match but he went and redeemed himself against Frank Mir, and then he won again and lost, and then went back to WWE, but it’s OK to come from the, and this is ridiculous, the “supposed fake world” of WWE to go to MMA because it’s like ‘oh, now he’s going to try the real stuff.’ It’s not the same to go from ‘hey I was on top, I lost two times in a row’ apparently she ‘can’t hack it’ so now she’s going to the ‘fake stuff.’ That doesn’t mean that she isn’t still legitimately a badass and just mop the floor with anyone that makes that statement. It’s just a perception that ‘now she’s in ‘fake wrestling? Big deal.’
It works the other way, and she could be. It takes a very special person for it to work the opposite direction. And that’s totally 100% on her. If she’s capable of having the charisma, as much as she had in MMA, she’s going to have to have ten times the amount in WWE. She’s going to have to take that stigma of ‘well you came from over here and now you’re trying your hand at this, and this is easier.’ It’s not easier. I trained King Mo and Dan Severn, I trained Dan for professional wrestling and the UFC. Both will tell you, and King Mo was like, ‘I don’t know how these guys do it.’ He was like, ‘I would much rather train for a fight than I would have to train to be a professional wrestler because physically it’s a lot harder.’ There’s much more demands.
Snow also talked about developing his clothing apparel Collar and Elbow.
I wanted to create a brand for wrestling. At the time, I didn’t know that there were any other ones. I wanted to do something, because ultimately the biggest fans of wrestling are the wrestlers, because you have to be such a fan of wrestling to want to be in it. There’s nothing wrong being a fan of wrestling, but the problem is, in so much of the general audience, or the general public if you wear a wrestling shirt and identify as a wrestling fan, most of the time they get the usual ‘oh, you like that? That’s fake. Why do you like that, that’s dumb.” They don’t want to wear [those] things. We decided that if we wanted to call it something universal as far as wrestling like Collar and Elbow, like tie-ups, whether it’s MMA, judo, jiu-jitsu, catch wrestling or freestyle—they all start with some kind of collar and elbow tie ups. It’s all very universal, and so for those people who just love wrestling, we wanted to create a brand and create designs that if you wore it out and [other people] weren’t wrestling fans see it and say ‘that’s cool’ but you being a wrestling fan know what it is and go ‘yeah, I like that. That’s awesome.’ And now it’s something that you can share and you relate to.
