Jim Ross Talks About What Wrestling on Christmas Used to Mean to Talent

WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross recently published a new blog on his official website, JRsBarBQ.com, in which he discusses the hectic holiday schedule of the WWE and what wrestling on Christmas used to mean to those in the profession.

Ross talks about the differences between holiday schedules in today’s “sports entertainment” world, and the old-school territory days of professional wrestling, saying that the “old-timers” would love being booked to compete on Christmas day. To them, being asked to work on Christmas meant they were the top stars of the day, and that they were going to be having a really good pay day.

In discussing this subject, Ross says,

“WWE doing a ton of TV this week in Texas so that many can have a few days off to celebrate the holidays. The work load for many within the company this week is hard to explain and one simply has to endure it to understand it.

Back in the day, if a talent wasn’t booked on the annual, Christmas might event in one of the many territories around the country, said talent would think that their days in that territory were numbered. Everyone wanted to work Christmas night as it produced one of the biggest paydays of the year for all talents, especially the guys on top.

I can only image the outrage that talents and many in the wrestling media would have today if wrestling companies promoted live events on Christmas night.

Looking back years ago, I had a handful of talents who protested WWE running live events on Easter Sunday due to their alleged religious beliefs. I say alleged because those that bitched the loudest were NOT religious seemingly on any other day of the year but used the Easter Sunday holiday as an excuse to want to be unbooked. Likely, it they had merely asked to be off it would have been facilitated if at all possible. Some of those conversations were actually reality TV worthy.”

You can read Ross’ entire new blog post here.