Paul Wight On Paying Your Dues: It’s An Old Timer’s Way Of Bullying Younger Talent
Paul Wight gave his thoughts on the recent debate about paying your dues in pro wrestling.
On August 8, Arik Cannon took to social media to call our Avery Styles after believing the second-generation wrestler didn’t pay his dues at a recent GCW show. The sentiment received a lot of pushback from the likes of Avery’s father, AJ Styles, as well as Cody Rhodes, and plenty more in the business, making the subject of paying dues in wrestling one of the most talked about topics in recent weeks. Now “The World’s Largest Athlete” has added his two cents to the conversation.
Appearing on TMZ’s Inside The Ring, Paul Wight was asked whether he views ‘paying your dues’ as important.
“Fuck that bullshit. Paying your dues, to me, is an old timer’s way of intimidating and bullying and fucking with the younger talent for no God damn reason. “If a talent comes in respectful with a good attitude, don’t come in like you own the place, don’t have an attitude, but why should you take heat because your athleticism, your look or what opportunities you’ve been given you’ve been successful on. Why should someone hold that against you because you didn’t drive for 35 dollars a night, and you didn’t set up some broken torn ass down ring, and you didn’t struggle for all this stuff. Why punish somebody for that? My thing is when I came in, everyone was so mad at me because my first match was against Hulk Hogan. I was 22 years old, is that my fault? Should I have gone to independents, should I have learned how people lie and manipulate and bullshit in smaller leagues and promotors don’t pay you, all these other stories that these other old timers went through that made them seasoned? To me that’s bitter sauce. I don’t like punishing younger talent because that’s not what our business should be about, our business should be about inspiring younger talent, helping them so they don’t make mistakes, helping them avoid pitfalls. Now if they don’t listen, I have a three strike rule. I will tell you something three times, if you don’t listen to it, I’m done. I’m not gonna waste my breath, you can figure it out yourself.”
-Paul Wight
Now, it was more than likely that Cannon did not mean to come across as intimidating or being a bully with all the work he has done both in his pro wrestling career and booking talent for F1RST Wrestling, but the ramifications of his comments have caused a big stir around the entire pro wrestling scene. Some being funny memes, some being arguments and some just being those that are yelling at the clouds.
Nowadays, Wight can sometimes be heard at the commentary table alongside Nigel McGuinness and Tony Schiavone on AEW Dynamite. In terms of his in-ring career, his last match on AEW TV was teaming up with Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi and Chris Jericho where the squad won against Don Callis Family members Brian Cage, Konosuke Takeshita, Kyle Fletcher & Powerhouse Hobbs in 2023.
Speaking of Avery Styles, his father recently revealed he’d be willing to come out of retirement to team with his sons at a big show. You can read more about that here.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates Paul Wight’s future, as well as the reaction to the Avery Styles situation as soon as we hear more.
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