Joey Styles, Vice President of Digital Media Content for WWE, appeared on VOC Wrestling Nation to help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the program’s move from AM Radio to the Cloud. In the interview, Styles discussed Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan’s rise to success, promoting Hulk Hogan on WWE.com the day it was reported on various websites that his contract with TNA Wrestling had expired, and more. Highlights from the interview are as follows:
Dolph Ziggler being underutilized: “My very good friend Dolph Ziggler isn’t being used to the best of his potential. You want to be very careful who you hand the ball to, but I think Dolph is someone that you can absolutely hand the ball to because his work is very exciting. He is unbelievably crisp and great on the mic; he is a big fan of standup comedy and he can ad lib as well (if he is given permission to do it). He’s also never going to embarrass the company, he’s never going to get in trouble with the law, he’s a model guy.”
Daniel Bryan’s rise to success: “The storyline got him over the top to be someone that you would by a ticket for. I was such a fan of his before he even came to WWE. The whole idea of making him lose in 18 seconds to Sheamus did more for him than winning by cheating. That was good for Daniel Bryan (it led to the YES chant the next night on Raw). The fact that the entire company (on the storyline) is ganging up against him, (is a result of the fact that) you wouldn’t do that for someone that you weren’t ready to hand the ball to.”
Internet fans being relevant: “People say Internet fans like they’re a small group. More people have the Internet than have cable tv now. They’re not a vocal minority, they are the only vocal fans. Nobody in our company wanted to acknowledge that (Twitter and Social Media) was as big as it was; but thankfully we got ahead of that and we as a company are huge on Social Media.”
Hulk Hogan being on the front page of WWE.com the day that the Internet reported that his TNA contract expired: “Absolutely (that was intentional). Nobody at WWE.com knows if the (front office) is talking to Hulk Hogan. But it’s out there on every other site; we know that fans are thinking it, so why wouldn’t we use all of the videos and content that we own and use it on the site to build traffic and entertain the fans?”
To listen to the audio interview, visit VOCNation.com.
