Batista recently appeared on E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness (transcript courtesy Wrestlinginc.com). Here are the highlights.
Today’s WWE product: “This is not a dig on anyone, but I just don’t feel that the product is as good as it used to be. I think it [has] just changed in a lot of ways and not for the better. When I came up with [Edge and Christian], I mean, everybody was rockstars, man! They were real, live rockstars! They were real performers and everybody had kind of an edge to them.” Batista continued, “they were interesting and different individuals and I feel like a lot of that [has] just been lost. I feel like a lot of the edginess has been taken out of wrestling, the creativity. There’s still great stuff going on with the company, but I don’t… and I feel like a dinosaur when I’m saying this, but I don’t feel like the product is as good as it was.”
NXT: “I think a lot of the guys, their hands are tied and I think a lot of the guys now, they’re terrified that they’ll lose their job. If they do something wrong, they’re going to lose their job. They’re much more easily replaceable now because they have a factory for them! NXT, it’s a wrestler factory. They just turn out wrestlers. I think a lot of them, again, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, I don’t mean [it as a] dig, a lot of them are cookie cutter. They’re coming up with these kind of characters for them. They’re cookie cutter and they’re not individuals. They’re not thinking outside of the box.”
