Grantland: “Kevin Nash’s Next Angle”
The popular sports and pop culture site has an amazing story up right now on Kevin Nash and his career inside the ring, living his life as a family man, and why he continues to wrestle despite his current age (spoiler alert: the money). In the piece, Grantland spends a lot of time talking up Nash’s recent roles in the films Magic Mike and Rock of Ages, but the most interesting parts to me show up whenever Big Sexy’s wrestling history is talked about. More specifically, how he could the “most despised man” to the online hardcore wrestling nerds. Nash talks about how he’s viewed by the internet and how he sees those particular group of “smarks”:
“‘I’m never going to be an Internet darling. I could hit an 890 hurricanrana tomorrow and they’ll say, ‘Oh, his left knee hit before his right knee,” he says. ‘You’re not supposed to be 7 feet tall, handsome, smart. You’re a giant, you should look like a giant and fee-fi-fo-fum around. You shouldn’t know anything about art. You shouldn’t be well-rounded. Look at the core of the hard-core wrestling fans. What do we have in common? When they go to New York City, do they go to the modern art museum and can’t believe that Picasso’s early work is not cubism? Do they know that? Do they care? Have they ever spent a day at an art museum ever in their life? Do they go to Amsterdam to see Van Goghs, then go to a coffeehouse and then go see Van Goghs again?’ He laughs. ‘They don’t. Sorry, man.’
It sounds like a great Kevin Nash promo.”
Kevin Nash then goes on to discuss the current WWE brand of wrestling and shows Grantland why the collective Internet wrestling community tend to have strong negative feelings about him:
“‘When Benoit and Guerrero hugged [at the end of WrestleMania XX], that was the end of the business,’ [Nash] says. ‘Has business been the same since that WrestleMania? Has it come close to the Austin era? Has it come close to the nWo or the Hogan era? You put two fucking guys that were great workers that were the same height as the fucking referees, and I’m sorry, man. Are you going to watch a porno movie with a guy with a three-inch dick? Even if you’re not gay, you will not watch a porno movie with a guy with a three-inch dick. That’s not the standard in porno films. So you put a 5-foot-7 guy as your world champion.’”
”’[CM Punk and Daniel Bryan] are not bigger than life,’ he says. ‘I bet they could both walk through airports and not be noticed unless they have a gimmick shirt on and the belt.’”
This bit of unapologetic frankness from Nash isn’t unusual, but it does seem out of place since he’s been urging fans to tweet at CM Punk about restarting a new nWo stable in the WWE. Then again, Kevin Nash loves working over the marks with his comments, so maybe he’s just trying to get people to be pissed off at him.
I doubt Kevin Nash cares whether or not people love him or his character, just as long as they continue to talk about him.
