Curtis Axel was one of the many WWE superstars released by the company last month, marking an end to his run with the company. During a recent episode of The Arn Show, legendary WWE superstar Arn Anderson spoke about Axel being released, saying that it shocked him.
Arn began by saying he was surprised that he was released, and that he was unable to take advantage of the long lineage he had in the industry itself. For those unaware, Axel’s father was Curt Hennig, and his grandfather was Larry Hennig, two large forces in the wrestling world. “His lineage was huge in this industry,” Arn said (transcriptions via Fightful). “Why he wasn’t able to take advantage of that… that was something else, guys would come up and they wouldn’t get to be who they were, who their dad was or who their uncle was. Well, that’s that just makes the business bigger. That you have second and third-generation wrestlers that are doing well and you see what an edge they have. For Curtis Axel to not be who he was and them try to name him two or three different times. The kid could perform. He could work. You could have done better by that in a lot of characters that have come along with huge lineages. For whatever reason, it’s like, “no, name him something else.'”
Anderson continued that he and Bo Dallas were a good team, but seemed to lack the entertainment factor that many need to make it in the business. Him and Bo Dallas made a good team. But, you know, they’ve always got this feeling in the back of their head that performance is not enough,” he said. “The fact that the guys look like good athletes is not enough. You always gotta put some entertainment on it. Well, if everybody’s entertaining I think nobody’s entertaining if everybody has the same gimmick, right? Everybody’s trying to do haha, then haha is overdone and you don’t appreciate any of it. Like you said earlier, everybody should have a niche. His niche was just he could go out and go.”
You can check out the full episode below, which features Anderson speaking on the other releases that took place last month below:
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