2. Luke Harper Says “WWE Style” Doesn’t Exist Anymore
During a recent appearance on The Chad Dukes Wrestling Show, former Intercontinental Champion Luke Harper talked about the Brand Split creating opportunity for a lot of new talent, Cody Rhodes working on the indys, WWE style & more. Below are the highlights:
On Cody Rhodes’ post-release schedule and if that’s appealing to him:
“I’m very happy for Cody Rhodes. It’s good to see a person I know like him go out there and do what he needs to do to fulfill his life. In my opinion, WWE, to me, is the top of the food chain. So I’m concerned with being at the top of that food chain, which is the top, top of the food chain. So for me personally, I need to be here right now to do what I need to do. In the future who knows, but I need to accomplish things before I can, I guess, sleep well at night. I mean, I sleep good because I have a great family and stuff like that, a great life, but career-wise, I have some things I need to accomplish… There’s places I need to be and it’s WWE right now. If Okada, if a Tanahashi, Michael Elgin, The Young Bucks, if they want to have a match the place they can find me is the WWE. I’m going to be busy making my way to the top of that food chain. The future, who knows? I have that in front of me right now.”
On the Brand Split:
“I think the brand split is a beautiful thing. It opens up opportunities for everybody up and down the card. You look at a September show, where it will be a SmackDown only pay-per-view. That means from the roster of SmackDown only, you’re going to draw eight matches to fill three hours. In my first three years in WWE that’s unheard of. You don’t get that opportunity. So to me it’s an opportunity.”
On if the “WWE style” is still a thing:
“I think that ‘learning WWE style’ is a very 2007, as late as 2010, mantra. I feel like things have changed now and that professional wrestling is professional wrestling, from the top to the bottom and what WWE is presenting is quintessential professional wrestling. You look at these guys who have come in, nothing’s changed. You don’t have to change anything and if you want to have that argument when I came in, you say it to me because I didn’t change a frickin’ thing. You go through your battles in developmental, but at the end of the day you’re you and if you have conviction in who you are and how you wrestle then that’ll show through and if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, then you have to look in the mirror and decide that.”
