Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My first venture to Qatar was with WWE. It was an incredible tour and we stayed at a luxurious hotel. I ventured out by myself and wandered down to a shopping center and there was beautiful architecture everywhere.
I have taken every amount of creative liberty and freedom that I can get and I've actually managed to push it. I would say being the champion gives me that freedom because you really get a little more carte blanche.
People try and make it a big deal, but a show's a show, work's work, if you haven't wrestled in New York in a couple months, it's always good to take a booking there because there's a lot of great wrestling fans up there.
At WSX I think I was very much trying to figure it out on my own and we were creating our own style and our own thing. I can only speak for myself, I was not trying to be anything. I was not trying to be like anyone else.
When I began in Ring of Honor, I was very fortunate to get on shows and get looked at and get the experience. I was working with a ton of guys who had more experience than me at the time, like AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels.
Mostly the guys I worked with like wrestling AJ Styles, Jamie Noble, wrestling Chavo Guerrero, wrestling Rey Mysterio... As much as I try to be an individual or unique I can't deny the strong effect these guys have all had on me.
It's more about the feeling and how you felt when it was going on. Were you laughing with your friends? Were you having a good time? That's what makes wrestling good. It's not the wrestling itself. It's the experience that people have.
You have to realize WWE's contract. They're not getting paid from advertising money. USA makes that money. WWE gets paid by USA, they get paid a lot of money, and the money increases every year. Ratings aren't the most important thing to them.
For the last two years, since I left IMPACT in 2018, I've spent basically the last two years just trying to be healthy, be strong, be ready for when that opportunity comes and I sort of felt like that's what I've been putting into the universe.
When I'm out there, it's not even me who is doing the acting and the wrestling and the moving. It is something that I feel like I see channels more than anything else. So, for me, I tune into the right frequency. I get turned on and we're ready for take off.
So I don't think one type of wrestling is right and one type of wrestling is wrong, and I've used that ability to unlearn what I've done and really go back and get back in touch with that Dragon Gate style since now there's a lot of guys that can work with that.
So, I can't tell you the mentality behind the stuff, because that's thousands of hours manifested into one moment, maybe in the shower or driving down the road that the idea comes and the genius strikes and sometimes, it happens moments before you go to the ring.
I wouldn't want to go see a comedian if he was using the same jokes. So I'm not going out there trying to do the same thing that and my body's changed, my life's changed and really if people have already seen me do something a 1,000 times, 1,001 is not going to impress anybody.
Let's face it: when we were crazy into wrestling, there were 20 million people on Monday nights watching wrestling. So what you have are 17 million lagged wrestling fans. People who connect to it somewhere, but haven't really found an inspiration or a cultural connection to it.
I have a little dojo in Clearwater called the Sai Dojo and I've just been putting in extra work there and so, when I get a chance to wrestle now, my comfort level in the ring is higher, my skills are sharper and I just felt like I couldn't have a better time to get these huge opportunities.
So I always respected the guys who were trying to do it on their own without taking a handout from a big organization. They were trying to create their own thing, the DIY style, which is sort of always been my style, kind of a makeshift survival mode and really just kind of forging your own path.
I've been living this extraordinary life with a new enlightened perspective, to see things from a higher perspective. I feel like I'm able to see things from that higher perspective at Impact Wrestling right now where there are unlimited opportunities and room for growth and to make some work I can really be proud of.
At WSX the message was loud and clear consistently, even as a rookie signing a contract and kind of talking about things and getting into the nitty-gritty details. I felt like I was always given a lot of respect and in fact sometimes I thought they were almost tooting my own horn too loud I thought it was almost silly.
I was just lucky to be there ahead of the curve to be the driving force behind bringing this amazing style of wrestling from Japan that combined Lucha Libre, American professional wrestling, Canadian professional wrestling and Japanese wrestling all into one beautiful mix that fans worldwide absolutely can't get enough of.
That is why I can never walk away from wrestling because there's this moment - the bell rings and everything slips away. The path, the future. There's nothing but that moment right in front of you where the intensity is high, the risk and reward are high, and you have to enter into a mental state that doesn't allow for hesitation.
Triple H was so generous to me with his time and his knowledge when I was like the young up-and-comer wrestling Chavo, and every life event, after our matches, he would come back and give me just a list of things to work on which is exactly what I see going on in NXT, like how they're adopting a high-flyer style to the WWE audience.