Paul London: Too Many People Would Rather Be Liked On Social Media Than Commit To Storytelling

Paul London doesn’t believe social media and wrestling mix.

At 38 years old, London has been in professional wrestling for nearly 20 years, having made his debut in 2000. He was around during the early days of ROH in 2002 and has wrestled all over the world since his WWE release in 2008. Speaking to Ben Givan of GG Media, London was asked about the current state of Independent wrestling.

“I can’t say I’m a big fan of it. I don’t really watch wrestling when I’m home. It doesn’t excite as much as I want it to. The things that I look for in wrestling to entertain me are on a different level than what I get regularly fed by what’s on TV. A lot of wrestling that I see, especially TV wrestling, a lot of it is not executed well in my opinion,” said London. “For whatever reason, ‘the climate of wrestling’ nowadays, like you have to be apart of this ‘climate’ and things have to go the way of this ‘climate.’ That stuff makes me sick. I’d rather spit all that out and do my own thing. That way I can dictate the pace as opposed to trying to live up to all these ridiculous acrobatics and car crashes and all this crap that really doesn’t entertain. If anything, I get hurt more if I try to acclimate to the current style. It’s flattering to know that you influenced people, but you would hope that those influences would lead to progression. Not stunting. Let’s not stunt the business and keep it dumbed down to a certain degree.

London continued, discussing how social media has influenced wrestling in all the wrong ways.

“Guys would rather be liked and get on social media and be loved and defy kayfabe or defy storytelling for the sake of being liked,” he stated. “That disgusts me. Social media and wrestling is poison. It’s a great tool for promoting. But if you’re going to sit there and pull the curtain back, please don’t. You’re making this crap for everybody. We need to maintain the aura of the excitement and illusion. Too many people would rather be liked in real life and not commit to storytelling and being performers. “

Kevin Sullivan made similar comments on a recent episode of X-Pac 1,2,360, stating that social media prevents wrestlers from getting real heat.

You can view the entire interview with London in the video above.