Magnus Talks About Working With Sting, TNA’s Youth Movement

– Magnus recently spoke with Ring Rust Radio, here are the highlights…

On Working With Sting: “I’m as grateful to Sting as anybody in the wrestling business for the benefit he has had in my career. Steve is a great guy and very very smart and just a model citizen as far as the way he conducts himself and how much respect he commands. There are some people who seem to be obsessed with respect and seem to be obsessed with guys not showing them enough respect but Sting is a guy who has never had to pull any stunts, never had to bully anyone, never had to throw his weight around or pull rank; he commands respect. The same could be said about Kurt Angle. Working with Steve was a pleasure every time, especially in San Diego not just for the fact that I got to be on that level or stage but that he trusted me a lot and deferred a lot of it to me every time we worked together. Whether it be promos, or in a match he’s always deferred to me a lot and said ‘what do you think, I want to know what you think we should do here and I’m going to trust you on this because I think that you’ll be right’ and that goes a long way and certainly goes a long way with the other talent too. I remember distinctly that day going through different scenarios and he brought Kurt over to bounce some things off of him and that was when Steve went ‘you know, I think I want you to beat me with a submission. We can do it all of these other ways but I want you to get me with the cloverleaf in the middle and I want to submit.’ And I just sat there and said ‘okay, that’s a tremendous thing to do for me.’ So then we talked about a few more things and then went to go get a coffee and Kurt was just sitting there looking at me and said, ‘did he just say that? What just happened here?’ It was just one of those things and he just goes, ‘you’ve never even done that for me.’ So that was the kind of guy Sting had been to me so obviously when you have that level of relationship and admiration for somebody I would always love to see him back and he’s over to a degree that is very rare in this business so from a business standpoint of course I would love to have him back any time.”

On TNA’s “Youth Movement”: “I love this ‘Youth Movement’ thing. I find it humorous and I actually wrote about it in my last column for FSM that a group of guys predominantly in their late 20’s, some in their early 30’s, can be described as a ‘Youth Movement’. I think in any other genre, especially sports, that would not be considered a youth movement at all. In pro wrestling, obviously, we play by a slightly different set of rules. I think that speaks more to the mentality of wrestling fans, or certainly the mentality of wrestling fans who, perhaps, over analyze things a bit or somehow think that their opinion is more valuable than any other fan’s because I think that the reality of the situation is that the Rock was on top in the WWF at 27, Triple H began moving into the upper echelon in his late 20’s, and I could go back and point to no end of guys who went on to become icons in the business, like the last two names I just mentioned, who all reached that level in their late 20’s because I think that’s the time when people gravitated to them.

But for some reason now, it seems to be more of an important thing to identify their age and that’s something I’ve had to deal with my entire career because I got picked up young. But I’m 6’4″, 250 (pounds), so it’s almost like a curse these days to have that because it’s almost like the opposite of not having the right look back in the day. Now, if you look a certain way and you have a certain background, suddenly it doesn’t matter if you go out and have a good match or not it’s ‘oh, he can’t do this, he can’t do that.’ ‘Overrated’, that’s another great one that gets thrown around a lot, but I think that you gravitate to whoever you’re on the same kind of platform with in terms of mindset not the level or anything like that because there’s certainly very little of that that goes on in TNA, there is a real sort of team feel to everything. Everybody just gets along and is treated equally.

I can take pride in the fact that I spoke up many times for Sam (Samuel) Shaw, we’ve known each other a long time, and I’ve also been a huge fan of Robby and Jessie’s work, and I certainly think Robby is easily the most underrated talent on our roster. I think EC3 has been doing great, (Rockstar) Spud has been doing great, and they’re all friends of mine, but I also have a huge amount of affection and respect for Joe, Bobby and James and A.J when he was here and many other guys like EY. Abyss is another guy, he wears a lot of hats in the company, he helps out with a lot of stuff behind the scenes aside from being a great talent on screen and always delivers and works hard and has an awesome attitude. So, really, I believe in a good mix of veterans, guys in their prime, and youth, but to me, your age shouldn’t define you and your age shouldn’t put you in one of those categories, your work should put you in one of those categories. If you happen to be young and you happen to be ready to be a top guy, that doesn’t mean you’re changing the whole philosophy, it means you in particular have proven yourself in one way or another and I think sometimes people are too quick to analyze every decision and take it to mean more that it does. The reality is that we’re all judged on merit. That’s the way that it should be.”