IMPACT’s Eli Drake Offers Interesting Take On Fans Who Prefer In-Ring Action

IMPACT Wrestling has certainly made some strides in 2018 with their product with great in-ring action and storytelling. One of their stars who has become one of the more entertaining portions of their programming has been Eli Drake, who re-signed with the company this year.

Eli’s ‘Facts Of Life’ segment has easily become one of IMPACT’s most popular recurring parts of their weekly Pop TV program, showing off his ability to entertain and character work. While speaking to WrestlingInc after the recent One Night Only: Night Of The Dummies pay-per-view in August, Drake had some interesting words regarding wrestling fans today, more specifically the ones who desire to see primarily only in-ring action:

“Like, you have to be able to tell a good story. I didn’t care about a Dean Malenko, I’m sorry Dean. I actually like you, you’re a nice guy personally, amazing worker in the ring, but it’s just boring if you can’t tell me a story. But, if you can say something memorable and give me memorable moments, that’s something. Nobody goes up to Steve Austin and goes, ‘Stunner!’. If anything, they pretend they got beer cans and do this *pours them into mouth* or they go, ‘Ahem’, or ‘That’s the bottom line’. You know, there’s memorable stuff as opposed to going up to somebody like, ‘Moonsault!’. It’s not something you do.

So my favorite part of the industry was always the drama, the trash-talk, all that kind of stuff and if you can throw in hard hitting action on the back end of that, that’s amazing. But, to rely only on that action and to not be able to bring it with any kind of character or anything like that, which I think is a plague in this business right now…sorry just speaking the truth…I think we’re doing the business a disservice, I think we’re doing the fans a disservice and I think that’s why you look at a RAW or SmackDown TV audience…or not TV, the live audiences where they can’t fill the arenas…or even the TV audiences where they can’t fill the hard camera side…IMPACT I can say. I will say Ring Of Honor’s doing well, but they’re in their own niche group and they were able to sell out Madison Square Garden or whatever, but they can’t do that every week. That’s a once a year thing. That’s like a WrestleMania-type thing or whatever.”

Quotes c/o WrestlingInc

If you use any of the above please credit The Chairshot for transcription.

EA’s Take: The man isn’t wrong, that’s for sure and that’s just a ‘Fact Of Life’ (see what I did there?). It’s beyond annoying seeing all the fans dragging places like WWE weekly because they think the “workers” should be in all the top spots. A prime example of this is the beyond stupid #WeWantTalent that’s been on Twitter the last couple of days. It’s essentially a call for all the marks to whine, piss and moan because their favorite isn’t in a spot they think they should be. Sorry, fools. If you want in-ring action exclusively, WWE is not the company for you. I’ve said it a million times, but the problem is these people believe they are in the majority when reality is they are the vocal minority. If you don’t like it, watch NJPW, watch Ring Of Honor, watch ANY NUMBER OF OTHER PROMOTIONS.

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