Originally published at Billy Gunn feels producers in WWE are taken 'a little bit' more seriously than they are in AEW
Billy Gunn chats The Acclaimed, Colten and Austin Gunn and weighs in on the producer role in AEW.
Since the launch of All Elite Wrestling in 2019, Billy Gunn has been a part of the company. Gunn has a double contract with the company and serves as a producer and a talent.
He dove into that producer role when he joined Renee Paquette on The Sessions podcast. Gunn was asked for his take on the differences between coaching in AEW versus coaching in WWE. He does not think there is much of a difference, but feels that producers are taken ‘a little bit’ more seriously in WWE.
Gunn shared that he tries to tell talents in AEW to slow down and pace themselves. When exploring why talents may not want to approach him for feedback, he suggests that it could be that they want to figure things out on their own or there’s the idea of going to him for advice and then not applying it.
I don’t think it’s that different .
I think it’s that .
Present day, Billy is aligned with The Acclaimed (Max Caster & Anthony Bowens). Their on-screen partnership was formed during the working relationship between The Acclaimed and Austin and Colten Gunn.
Austin and Colten turned on their father and now, Billy is with Caster and Bowens. He thinks things are going to fall into place for The Acclaimed, stating that they’re in that place of finding the balance of being entertaining and also wanting to wrestle in a serious manner. He also spoke about Danhausen and said he does not get the character, but he really likes him.
Danhausen started all this ‘Ass Boys’ stuff on the cruise ship that just kind of stuck and I thought it was amazing. He’s such a different character that a lot of people — I don’t get it, but I really like him. The Acclaimed have something special. They’re still in that, hey, I wanna do this rap and be very entertaining, but what about my wrestling? Well it’ll fall into place. You just have to give it time to figure out what is natural and what isn’t. You have something right now that is really entertaining. It’s okay to hang your hat on that right now. It’s okay, it’s okay had that ‘ladies and gentlemen’ that I don’t think nobody has — anybody on this planet doesn’t know it. But so, and it’s okay that they dig into that and they understand that because that’s meaning I have everybody’s attention now. So no matter what wrestling I do, I have their attention but I’m setting it up with something cool, that whole spiel that they do. Now it’s just, don’t worry about — because they wanna do that and everybody’s into it then they wanna wrestle really serious. So it’s a little bit of a throw-off dynamic and you can still get there, don’t force feed it. Just stick with that right now and everything else will fall into place and I think that’s what I’m here to help them do is to try to get them to understand that just kind of let things flow. It’s gonna come.
Prior to the conversation about Danhausen and The Acclaimed, Gunn spoke about the differing personalities of his sons and why they work well together.
He said Austin has an over the top personality and a lot of charisma and it would do no favors to Colten if he tried to match that because that’s not his personality. He feels that what makes them click is that they are different and it’s more natural than trying to act the same.
I think it’s really good and I only compare that because I know that dynamic. Me and Brian are totally opposite. I could never talk on the mic like he could, I could never have that kind of charisma like he has but I have my things and when we combine those two, they work really good because neither one of us is trying to force what we are not good at. We realize what we’re not good at and we go, ‘Okay, I’m good at this, you’re good at that. How do we make it all gel?’ And I think they’re really good at doing that. Sometimes you see somebody that’s so entertaining and so energetic and you just go, ‘Well if I don’t do that, then I’m gonna get left behind’ and that’s not true. What happens is if you try to catch that, you get left behind because it’s very — that’s not your personality and now you’re trying to do something that’s so outside your personality, it comes off fake and it comes off forced and when that happens, people just instantly check out and if they do that, it takes forever to catch ‘em back.
Next up for Caster and Bowens is an AEW World Tag Team Title shot. They’ll be challenging Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland for the belts at All Out.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit ‘The Sessions with Renee Paquette’ with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.