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If you've never stepped in a wrestling ring, and you're with me, we can still have an excellent wrestling match, because that's how good I believe I am.
When you get put in a position like that, to shave off the hair of the boss of the company, they're putting a lot of faith in you, and they believe in you.
We have to start encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones and start doing new things. Anything anybody does new, there are a bunch of naysayers.
Some guys lock up when they hear the crowd. I feel the energy and take it with me into the fight. I've been in front of huge crowds and know to use that energy.
Kurt Angle was amazing. He was the person who got me into pro wrestling. He found me when I was at the Olympic training center just wrestling, amateur wrestling.
When you get to a certain level in wrestling, you got to be the ring general, and I've been in wrestling for a long time. And I can be a ring general against anybody.
I wanted to go into this fight business, and I wanted to go into it full force. So when you do something like that - enter into a new venture - it keeps you very busy.
Traveling is a part of the business. I think it's really the hardest part of the business because the wrestling part is the easy part - something I love and enjoy doing.
I'm really considering getting into amateur wrestling and getting into more tournaments. I'm looking into going to do some Jiu-Jitsu tournaments. I'm looking into everything.
I like to get the blood flowing and get as loose as I can possibly get. It's not very difficult to hurt yourself out there if you aren't prepared, especially in a Fatal Four Way.
When I started, I just put my nose to the grindstone, had great trainers and opponents like Fit Finlay, Arn Anderson, Booker T, Umaga and Bob Holly, and good things started to happen.
My family comes from Panama, and I grew up in a single parent household with my mother, who barely spoke English. She couldn't get a good job, yet there were four of us for her to raise.
I can go and fight, take one punch, and have a concussion and start having issues with it, or I can wrestle my entire career and never have a concussion. It's just a hazard of the business.
I'm the type of person where, at the end of the game, if there's 10 seconds left, and you need to get somebody the ball, and you're behind by one, give me the ball. Get me the ball every single time.
One thing you gotta take into consideration is that it's professional wrestling, and you know it going in. There's dangers to every profession, and our particular profession, concussions is one thing.
Everyone likes to be the heel. Everyone wants to be the bad guy. I mean, I love being the bad guy, but the crowd doesn't want me to be a bad guy. In real life, I'm too much of a good guy to be a bad guy.
When you go into MMA you really can't do it half-assed. If you do it half-assed, then you're going to get annihilated. You're going to get destroyed out there: there are some really good fighters out there.
If you play college sports, it's not like you have to - the next step in your career is another sport. You don't have to go into another sport. If you play college sports, you obviously graduated with a degree.
With wrestling, we're still athletes. I train like we're an athlete as opposed to a body builder. Some people still have that body-builder mentality. But not from me. I do a lot of agility work and stuff like that.
Being in the wrestling business, it was a whole lot to deal with in a short amount of time. I went from amateur wrestling one minute to, the next minute, I'm traveling the world, and I'm on the road 250 days a year.
That's why I love wrestling: because there's so many different people. I love everybody, from Hornswoggle to the Great Khali to Seth Rollins, to The Bludgeon Brothers. I love everything about wrestling because of that.
My dad demanded results. I wasn't expected just to be a student, I was supposed to get straight A's. My dad didn't want me just to play sports, he pushed me to win state championships in high school and national championships.
In wrestling, you've got to be an athlete. You can't just be a body builder; you can't just be this big strong guy who picks people up and throws them around. For longevity in the business, you got to keep your body fit and together.
Donald Trump was really cool. I think a lot of people don't understand him. He brings so much media attention to anything he does. He's a proven success. I think people should listen to what he says a little more than focusing on hair.
We had some rough times in TNA. We had some pay issues, and this and that, they were some other issues. But at that time, we were working harder than we ever worked. Even though, you know, we were being paid late and all, we worked harder than we worked before.
Everybody gives Trump an extremely bad rap. He's a businessman, so he is not trying to rub your back and tell you everything is going to be OK. He is going to set standards and, when everything is in chaos, you need someone who is willing to do what needs to be done.
I think the problem people get into is they want to go into the gym and look at other people's workouts, or they want to lift what other people are lifting. I started out really small. I actually did a lot of research, and I learned all about working out. So take gradual steps.
When I was with WWE before, I was a big guy throwing people around - power moves. Then after that, when I left WWE, I was like, 'I still enjoy professional wrestling,' but some of the smaller guys look up at me and say, 'I don't wanna wrestle him. I don't wanna get thrown around by that guy.'
When I head into the cage for an MMA fight, for that time inside the cage, I hate the person standing across the cage. I want to beat him up and beat him up to the point where he never wants to go against me again. After the fight, I can shake his hands, and he - we can be best friends. It's the same thing in professional wrestling.
When I went to Impact, it was me proving myself on a daily basis to a lot of different people. I mean, I had matches with Austin Aries, matches with Jeff Hardy, Bobby Roode, Drew McIntyre. I mean, I wrestled everyone. During that time, I wasn't just sitting back saying, 'Man, I hope WWE picks me up. I hope they see me. I hope to get back.'
A lot of times, professional athletes say, 'I'm not a role model; I'm an athlete.' I don't mind being a role model because I know what I've done in order to make it to where I am right now. It's a lot of hard work; it's a tremendous amount of hard work. But in order to be make it to a certain level, everybody knows it's going to take time.
One of my first overseas trips with WWE was to France. I walked out of our hotel, and I see a little kid walking toward me with his mom. He gets a couple of steps past me and he stops in his tracks. I see his mom do a little bit of a double-take, then he runs over and just grabs on and starts hugging my leg as hard as he can, then he starts crying.
It's kind of the period of your career where as a fighter, you need some sort of validation from time to time. I mean, winning matches and going off to the next one, without really having any direction, it's fun, but it's good to have a period where you can say "Ok, I won a title. Ok, I got picked up by a big organization." So every step in there is important.