Paul Wight thinks the phrase “paying your dues” is a cover for older wrestlers bullying younger ones, and he opened his TMZ Inside The Ring interview by saying so before the hosts had finished introducing him.
F*** that bulls***,” he said. “Paying your dues to me is an old timer’s way of intimidating and bullying and f***ing with a younger talent for no goddamn reason.
The subject has run through wrestling for a fortnight, since Arik Cannon said Avery Styles had avoided helping set up at a GCW show and AJ Styles defended his son. Cody Rhodes, JBL, Matt Hardy, Kevin Nash and Brian Pillman Jr. have all weighed in. Wight is the most forceful of any of them, and he has an obvious personal stake.
When I came in, everybody was so mad at me because my first match was against Hulk Hogan. I was 22 years old. Is that my fault?
Should I have gone to independent? Should I have learned how people lie, manipulate and bulls*** in smaller leagues and promoters don’t pay you, and all these other stories that all these other old timers went through that made them seasoned? To me, that’s bitter sauce.
He set one condition on it.
If a talent comes in respectful with a good attitude, don’t come in like you own the place. Don’t have an attitude. But why should you take heat because your athleticism, your look, or what opportunities you’ve been given, you’ve been successful on? Why should someone hold that against you because you didn’t drive for $35 a night and you didn’t set up some broken torn ass down ring?
His second point is that nobody has updated what the phrase means.
What are paying the dues now? The business has changed so much. These kids have brands now with social media, and they understand TikTok and Instagram and Twitter. They are smoking it on that and building their brand and extending their brand.
What’s the difference between them doing that or riding up and down the road, sticking eight by ten sheets of paper to a telephone pole, let everybody know everybody’s wrestling at the armory that night?
He was less generous about something else young wrestlers say.
I don’t like to hear all this, oh, I love the business. You’ve been in the business five minutes. You don’t know if you love it or not.
His own measure is a specific one.
I went 16 years and missed Christmas every Christmas for 16 years because we had a show on Christmas Day either in Chicago or New York, and I’d have to fly out Christmas Eve because most of those places had bad weather, and you had to get there a day before the show just in case. So tell me how much you love the business.
He also warned against mistaking wins for the job.
Wins are great, they feel good. Your friends tell you how awesome you are. Winning and losing is not our business. Our business is about going out there and giving the fans the best possible show that we can. It’s not the Paul White show. This is a brand that you’re building. This is a relationship with your audience that you’re building.
If you can do that, where you make that connection with the audience, I don’t care if you paid your dues or not. I really don’t.
There is a limit to his patience, and it is not much of one.
I have a three-strike rule. I will tell you something, give you advice three times. If you don’t listen to it, I’m done. I’m not going to waste my breath. I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear.
He knows how that sounds from the other side, because he was on it. Wight said he once went looking for a compliment from The Undertaker after a match he was pleased with.
I said, hey, do you have any advice? Is there anything I could do? Anything I could work on. He goes, yeah, you can take three weeks off and quit the business, and he walked off.
His practical advice for anybody arriving in a locker room was less philosophical.
Get a chair, take up as little space as possible because there’s other guys in that dressing room. Don’t bring in every bag you got and spread your s*** all over the place. Be neat, be clean, wash your gear after a match, rinse it out because nobody wants to wrestle anybody that smells bad.
Conduct yourself with respect. You should be all right. Sounds pretty preachy, doesn’t it? Sorry about that.
Wight debuted for WCW in 1995 as The Giant, wrestling Hulk Hogan for the World Heavyweight Championship at Halloween Havoc in his first match. He joined AEW in 2021 and works there as a commentator and coach.
