Swerve Strickland is always quick to give credit where it’s due when it comes to helping his development in the world of professional wrestling.
AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland recently sat down with Raj Prashad of UPROXX. When asked who has played a pivotal role in his development in All Elite Wrestling, Strickland pointed to Dustin Rhodes and the company’s Wrestling Administration Coordinator, Will Washington.
“(Washington is) very good at understanding wrestlers,” Swerve Strickland said. “We have weak spots and blind spots that we don’t see. And it’s his job to point those out to make sure that we don’t make mistakes because of those blind spots and those weak spots, and he’s very good at pointing those out to me, so I’m not my own worst enemy.”
Strickland also put over what Dustin Rhodes has done for him in the squared circle by pushing and guiding him to be the best version of himself.
“Structuring things, things that he would notice in matches, things like hearing the crowd, knowing when to do this, knowing when to shift on certain times in matches, knowing what’s needed and what’s not needed,” Swerve Strickland said. “Make sure the timing, the camera angles. This didn’t look right in that camera.
“There’s a huge science and art form to this. And he’s catching certain things that a lot of people don’t see, which is a magical thing. That’s someone that you want in your corner. That’s someone that you want to receive guidance from.”
The importance of listening and taking advice in professional wrestling
Strickland made it a point that you can have great minds in wrestling to listen to, but if you don’t know each other very well, it’s hard to trust that their advice will work for you as it did for them.
“You can have great minds, but if they don’t know you and you don’t know them and you don’t understand, and you don’t trust their knowledge and their advice and everything, it’s kind of pointless to be working together,” Swerve Strickland said. “It’s about building the chemistry and the relationship between one another, knowing your best attributes and how to utilize them in the best way for you and someone pulling those things out of you and knowing when to pull the trigger on certain things and when to just pull back and not use, let’s wait, very simple things.”
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