In a recent interview with Joel Pearl and Jeremy Lambert as part of Fightful’s In The Weeds, MLW World Champion Alex Hammerstone discussed several topics, including long title reigns in the wrestling business, fans wanting to see title changes including during his match against Jacob Fatu several months ago, and more.

On long title reigns in the wrestling business and keeping the reigns fresh to fans: “To a certain extent, fans are always going to get burnt out, there are some people, no matter if you feed someone filet mignon every night of the week, eventually they’re going to say I want a cheeseburger, no matter how good it is, eventually people crave something different for the sake of craving something different. Sometimes, once they get it, they realize oh crap, I should have kept my mouth shut. People will root for an underdog in wrestling, and once they win, they’re like oh, we had fun cheering for them, but we didn’t expect this to happen and now, we don’t really know what we want. That being said, I think it comes down to making sure there is someone there interesting to oppose them, no matter how good or talented someone is at the top, if they don’t have someone meaningful to build stories with, it gets difficult. If you can create something people are invested in, and people want to keep seeing that Champion fight, that really helps, then it’s finding ways to keep it fresh, different types of matches, things of that nature, shifts in the character. It’s an uphill battle these days, back in the day, people only saw the wrestling when they saw the wrestling, even the most available stuff, Monday Night RAW, was once a week and you didn’t see wrestling anymore. Now, you watch wrestling on the night it happens and you see the review the next day, and then, highlights on Twitter after that, then the recap the next day on YouTube and by the time you’re to the next week, you’ve been watching that show over and over and you’re already sick of what happened on that show. It’s a different era, but little things like that can make it a little more interesting.”

On fans wanting to see title changes including in his match against Jacob Fatu at MLW SuperFight 2023: “When I wrestled Fatu a couple of months ago, they were ready to see a new Champion, they were kind of more his corner than they were mine. I don’t know if we’re going to see a repeat of that at MLW Never Say Never, people want a quick Instagram reel or TikTok, it’s hard to convince someone to sit down and pay attention to something, it’s the exact same way in wrestling. No matter how much they love someone, or want them to be the Champion, if you’ve had it for more than three shows, they’re excited about the next guy winning it. I don’t know if we’re going to see that vibe takeover the arena this weekend, it’s very much a possibility they are excited at the prospect of a new Champ that the crowd shifts in his favor, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with in the past.”

The full interview is available at this link.