The tenth episode of Mind Of The Meanie released this week and in addition to Blue Meanie talking about the intricacies of time travel, he and co-host Josh Shernoff shared some thoughts regarding the value of having a manager at ringside for up and coming talent.
Before they dive into that discussion, Meanie reads off his list of top wrestling managers and includes Bobby Heenan at the top of it. “Bobby Heenan’s number one. I think everybody can agree on that then everybody’s fighting for number two.”
Shernoff adds the notoriety in which the likes of Mr. Fuji and Sherri Martel gave to talent back in the 80s and 90s, citing Shawn Michaels’ brief run with the latter as a good example.
“It’s just being cheap. It’s people being cheap and stuff like that. Instead of spending a couple bucks on pyro, get a couple good managers in there and I see that happening now with AEW they’re actually getting some managers in there,” Meanie stated.
“You look at like Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, what he’s doing now with Lance Archer, a whole new audience is going to grow up, I mentioned Mr. Fuji, a whole new audience is going to grow up looking at Jake Roberts the way I grew up looking at Mr. Fuji,” Shernoff added before saying what these legends in AEW will be doing for their legacy managing current day talent.
“I trained under Afa The Wild Samoan but as just a fan I knew him as the manager of The Headshrinkers, you know? Then of course as I got older I learned more of the Wild Samoans and everything that they’ve given to the business, but I think that they’ve lost that over time in the WWE and I think AEW is really saying like, ‘Hey we’ve got these big, big stars: Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, we’ve got these big-name people that we’re now able to have and give a new lease on life in this business as the corner person, the manager. I think it’s awesome what they’re doing.”
Meanie agreed, referencing his time learning under Raven while he was in ECW.
“It also gives that person a little bit of a rub, but it’s also a little bit of a lesson as well because like I said plenty of times, I learned a lot just from managing Raven and stuff like that, being in his corner and listening to Raven lay out a match and then ‘You’re going to do this here, and this is why and count this many beats and then hop in for timing.'”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
So much more coming from this episode as Meanie and Shernoff discuss bullying and mental wellness in the later half of the episode. You can listen to in it’s entirety below.
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