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I’m a newfound listener to Edge and Christian’s podcast - E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness. It is indeed awesomeness and you should listen too.
The former tag champs were discussing the Tyler Bate/Pete Dunne Takeover: Chicago match, which they were highly impressed with, but felt there were some small detail issues a veteran could/should point out to the pair (for instance, there was a spot with Bate’s hand right after a suplex on the apron that got a great pop but never paid off).
This led to discussing their younger careers: What they didn’t realize then, why it’s important to seek out and listen to veterans, and how “Shawn, Austin, Taker would pull us aside” to give advice.
Christian shared this lil anecdote:
“I was at a live event, I’ll never forget it, in Nebraska, and I was working singles. You and I had split up, and Steve Austin was main-eventing. Steve was a guy that I respected, that I still respect, and what I respected him for was the fact that he was this guy who probably could have shown up when he wanted to, when the show was going on, or he could leave early. But he didn’t. He was there before everybody else. He left long after everybody was gone. He was the first there, last to leave, and he watched everything. I always respected him for that because that’s what a guy in his position did.
I remember asking him specifically “Hey, can you watch my match tonight? I’m trying to get better as a singles performer.” And Steve doesn’t pull punches, he’s a straight shooter. I came back from the match... and Steve is a friend of mine. I thought he’d be like “Hey, this is a buddy”, the crowd was reacting, match was good, got reactions. I’ll never forget it... I walked back and said “What did you think?”
He looked me straight in the eyes and said “Why don’t you learn how to f**king sell?” Then he walked away.
I was like “Whoa. Hold on a second here. What?” I went back and watched a bunch of my matches and realized “He’s right. I don’t sell enough.”
And that’s the bottom line.