When it comes to celebrity wrestling, there's Logan Paul – and then there's Bad Bunny – and then there's everyone else.
Despite having less than two years of in-ring experience and fewer matches on his resume than any other member of the WWE active roster by a pretty wide margin, Paul has found a way to become one of the biggest box office attractions not just because of his social media following but because of his very legitimate in-ring abilities to go head-to-head against some of the best in-ring performers professional wrestling has to offer.
And yet, there's another wrinkle Paul would like to add to his resume to really take his game up a notch and become the sort of performer that fans talk about for years to come: Becoming a Mic Foley-esque hardcore legend.
“I want to keep going harder. That's my thing and potentially my problem. I want to go to the top rope the next time and want to jump off the top rope,” Logan Paul said on ImPaulsive via Fightful. “Two luchadors, one on the front, one on the back. It's something that I can do in the WWE because, while I don't have the experience of my peers, I'd like to go to the PC [Performance Center] and start training, maybe make some more appearances on Monday Night RAW, and SmackDown, so I can get that respect and maybe get that experience, even though I am late to the game, I'm extremely late. The one thing I can do, and am excited to do, is anything risky. I'm ballsy. I don't give a f**k, I will send it. I love entertainment. I will close my eyes and just go. That can be risky, and I have to be reeled in sometimes by the producers and the people at WWE, but I'm trying to do some Mick Foley-type off the top the cage onto a table from 30-feet high, Jeff Hardy-type-s**t Swanton Bomb. That's what I want to do, and I want to do it with the endeavor or pursuit of getting more belts. Do I become tag team champion with Dominik Mysterio? Could be fun. Two heels, two people the audience loves to hate. I like Dom.”
Whoa, there's a lot to unpack there, some of it cool, some of it very interesting, some of it kind of wild.
First and foremost, if Paul gets his wish and is able to wrestle a cage match with a fantastical hardcore spot, fans will more likely than not compare his efforts to Shane McMahon over Foley, as the “Maverick” exudes a real entitled energy that feels much more akin to the “Billion Dollar Prince” than the “Hardcore Legend” who has worked his way up from a backyard wrestler working thumbtack matches for a hot dog and a handshake to one of the most popular WWE Hall of Famers of all time.
Still, the idea of teaming Dominik Mysterio up with Paul is an interesting idea, as they are quite clearly the two biggest heels in the WWE Universe right now and could ratchet things up even higher if they work together with regularity. Sure, they'd have to deal with the whole Finn Balor and Damian Priest holding the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Titles thing, but hey, where there's a will – and, more importantly, there they can make money – there's a way to make it work.
Ric Flair believes Logan Paul has big Shane McMahon energy, too.
While the idea of comparing Logan Paul to Shane McMahon makes a lot of sense, it's far from an original concept from yours truly, as Ric Flair actually made the same observation on his Be The Man podcast over the Summer.
“I expect he’ll [Paul] try, he reminds me of Shane McMahon,” Ric Flair said on his Be The Man podcast via Wrestling Headlines. “He’s not afraid of anything. So I think he’ll be a great contribution. I mean, those ladder matches are tough. You know, I took a lot of bumps in [those], and I’ve only been in a couple of them. But I don’t give them.”
Is there a world where fans could see Paul pulling off Shane-O-Mac spots like going Coast-to-Coast, yeeting himself off the top of a Hell in a Cell cage, or tearing both of his quads doing a leapfrog routine? If he keeps making WWE appearances and performing at a high level who knows, maybe Paul will rise to that same level of heel and force a match between himself and Mr. McMahon's baby boy.
Follow Us
Subscribe