TNA star Ken Anderson was recently interviewed by Al Castle, senior writer at The Wrestler/Inside Wrestling magazine. Topics discussed include Anderson’s days as a WWE jobber, having to deal with his father’s death during his first WWE push, the importance of blood in wrestling, the heat he got for portraying an anti-U.S. military character, how he deals with criticism, and more.
The magazine, which features Ken Anderson on one cover and Sheamus on the other, is on newsstands now and is also available at pwi-online.com.
Here are some highlights of what Ken Anderson said about:
His WWE Departure:
“The thing is that the chairman of that company likes guys who stand up for themselves. He likes guys who aren’t just pushovers, who aren’t just ‘glad-handing, nonsensical yes-men,’ to quote another wrestler (CM Punk). And yet, it depends on what day it is and what side of the bed he woke up on. So it’s really a gamble. If you’re a pushover and you’re a wimp and you say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,’ you’re going to be trampled over, regardless. You’re going to get steamrolled regardless of how talented you are. But if you don’t, if you play it the other way, you have a chance of being successful. Like you said, I made some mistakes. I stuck my foot in mouth when I shouldn’t have. I spoke up when I shouldn’t have. None of it was with bad intentions. What’s more, this is the wrestling business and some guys get injured. The interesting thing for me is that you look at that roster and there are guys that get injured time and time again. The Undertaker is good for an injury every year or so. Steve Austin’s been injured. Rey Mysterio gets injured. But when you haven’t made the right political decisions, and you’ve been injured a time or two, that could be possible ammo for some of those people who aren’t your allies to say, ‘Boy, he’s injured all the time. Is he not reliable?’ And when you’re not around to defend yourself, that could be your downfall.â€
Whether Wrestling should be PG:
"I don’t know how it’s possible to have a show about guys that want to fight each other, with half-naked women running around and all of the other stuff that we have, and have it be PG. I just don’t understand how that works. It doesn’t make sense to me. Me favorite years in the wrestling business were the Attitude Era. Maybe it’s as simple as they’ve decided, ‘We need it to get away from this for a while, as far away as possible, so that when we bring it back it will be a what’s-old-is-new kind of thing.’… Our target audience is 18-34. And you’re giving them PG content … If you’re 18 years old, you don’t want to see PG stuff. You don’t want to see somebody called a ‘darn butthole.’ It insults their intelligence.â€
