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Trent Seven wouldn't have let me even go to a try-out wearing socks.
If I could face anyone at any point at WrestleMania, it would be Mark Andrews.
I'm lucky to have this career where I haven't spent time nailed down to one brand.
For me, I've wrestled since I was 12 years old, so I've never had time off or been injured.
I started wrestling in Coventry in a run-down community centre just on mats, we didn't even have a ring.
I've been able to travel the world and represent WWE, and have that stability of being part of that one company.
I thought I could go and make a bigger name for myself on the independents and possibly in Japan, places like that.
From my standpoint, I feel like I'm at the start of my career, I'm only 23-years-old but I have been doing it for 10 years.
I sort of seen a few iterations of NXT, but the one constant throughout is it's a competitive locker room in a positive way.
My main focus is performance. I want to put on better matches in the ring and stay injury-free, so it's not about aesthetics.
I can carry a brand. I did it in the UK with an entire brand basically built around me, and my in-ring work speaks for itself.
I call myself 'The Bruiserweight'. I fit the weight category of a cruiserweight, but I don't wrestle like your average cruiserweight.
The main challenge is being put into a tag team, where you've never done any tag team stuff before, even coming up with new moves and ideas.
I think I'll always be homesick. Even though Orlando is amazing and the sun's always out, I'll always miss Birmingham. I don't know what it is.
NXT has been great to me. I love being able to wrestle the way I want to wrestle and be who I want to be. NXT is this amazing platform to do that.
You won't see many flashy, fancy moves off me but you will see a gritty, hard hitting style, that you won't have seen before from many other people.
I have a soft spot for those wrestlers who used to bounce around different territories, if you want to use that word, or different parts of the world.
I want to move along and become the biggest star in WWE. I don't really care who it angers along the way, to be honest. It's no concern of mine, really.
For myself and Tyler Bate to go out there and show what we can do in front of an audience that probably isn't that familiar with what we do, I'm grateful.
I see myself as a career professional wrestler. The end goal wasn't always to go to Raw or SmackDown, it was just to create a body of work that I'm proud of.
I love the opportunity to go out there for 40 minutes and just wrestle, and have that time to engage the story and have a brilliant technical wrestling match.
I always tried to be the good guy and emulate what my favourite wrestlers were doing - people like AJ Styles - but my character started to click when I became bad.
A lot of people ask do I want to do NXT, or do I want to do main roster. I would love to be able to start something new and build a UK brand that we can all be proud of.
I started in an asbestos filled room on some thin judo mats and the first time I was in a ring was my first match. We did shows for 50 people and were pleased with that.
When I started wrestling, WWE was a light at the end of the tunnel that no-one thought they could ever get to. Especially being British, only one or two people ever got there.
I was getting loads of tweets from people saying that Shawn Michaels had talked about me on Chris Jericho's podcast and then I got to meet Shawn Michaels when I was over in Florida.
I personally haven't heard anything, but WWE haven't exactly been quiet about the fact that their aim is to do a full time UK brand show. They have been quite open about that from the start.
William Regal is an obvious influence, as is Fit Finlay - you can see that in my style of wrestling - but I try not to copy too much of what I see now as that was part of my problem early on.
I'm an advocate for being full-blown vegan. That's my ideal way that I would love people to live, but the key to it is eating as little processed foods and a more whole foods-type diet as possible.
I was in China for 3 months, doing a tour and I was teaming with CJ Banks. We needed a name and it was around the time of the Cruiserweight Classic. We thought Bruiserweight's was a pretty funny name.
In the UK brand, I would personally like to have a continued rivalry with Mark Andrews, he's always my favorite opponent and if I could do that in different stages with WWE then I would be really happy.
I've always had the mindset, even on independent shows, that even if the audience knew who I was, I was treating it as if they didn't. Every time I want to teach them who I am and show them what I'm about.
I wanted to work for WWE once and I wanted to make a living off of wrestling. They were my goals and I managed to achieve all of that by the age of 22, which then opened a whole new set of goals going forward.
Obviously I'm really busy, fitting in WWE stuff and appearances like this now, all the events I've done and the SmackDown tours, then travelling. I've just been to Singapore, I've been to Canada... all over the world.
Yeah I feel like British wrestling deserves a bigger chance and everyone will see that when it's on the WWE Network. People will realise not just in England, but in all the different countries here, there is a lot of talent.
At independent shows the crowd are very involved and it's about interacting with the live audience. With WWE that's less important and it's more about portraying your character and getting it across to as many people as possible.
It's always been the way in Britain. I'm not sure what it is, but it's always been a cliche over here that we start wrestling from about 10-years-old. I'm really glad that I got the opportunity because it's given me a massive head-start.
For me, it was the early independent era of AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Daniel Bryan that inspired me and they were in sports halls and grimy little venues having fantastic wrestling matches and that's what appealed to me about wrestling at the time.
When we travel every weekend and we're out in these different towns, seeing the numbers that show up and how into the shows they are, I love the fact that we get to travel around and bring NXT to these fans in different towns that love what we do.
I'd love to do WrestleMania - if it was possible I'd love to defend the UK Title at WrestleMania, and who knows - in a few years' time, whether I'm the first British WWE Champion, or maybe the second or third, that's definitely a goal that I'd like to achieve.
I think a lot of wrestling revolves around the bodybuilding-type perspective on nutrition, whereas I have a different approach; I'm way more focused on longevity and making sure I get those micronutrients in and eating a bunch of organic good as often as I can.
Wrestling in general is a lot more Americanized, to use that term loosely. Back when I started, there were still a few people practicing that old-school British style. At the time, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to wrestle like AJ Styles; I wanted to do flips and that sort of stuff, but I never really got it.
When I was young, I was a hunter, walking wooded hillsides with confident steps and a gun in my hand. I knew the blur of wings, the rocketing form, and the Great Moment that only hunters know, when all existence draws down to two points and a single line. And the universe holds it breath. And what may be and what will be meet and become one - before the echo returns to its source.