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I think it's important for youngsters from all walks of life to have some sort of representative that they can look up to and aspire to be and let them know there's a chance for anybody from any background.
Everyone's the hero in their own story. You've lived your life. You're the good guy of your life, the protagonist of your own movie. Everyone knows that they have more in them to offer than they sometimes show.
When I was 17 years old, I was given the opportunity to be trained as a wrestler. At the time, I never really thought about making it a career. I only saw it as a chance to do something that I always wanted to do.
When I signed with WWE, a lot of people, even close friends, told me that this place was going to chew me up and spit me out, just because of the way my personality is. It's been an adjustment for me as a human being.
It's got to be repetition of me over and over again, constantly delivering the goods every time I'm out there. And that's how I'm going to get to where I need to be, which is in an important match at WrestleMania every year.
It's just so weird how you get so used to what we do: I could go in there and wrestle main events on Live Events for 25-30 minutes, but I couldn't really get the sheets off me in bed. It's weird how that works. Your body just adapts.
I think you've still got to try to be good, day-to-day. You see a granny, you hold the door open for her. You just try to do the right thing. I don't know if that makes you a saint or the greatest guy in the world, but trying is a start.
I've worked in front of crowds of two hundred that sounded like a thousand, and I've worked in front of crowds of five thousand that sounded like two hundred. It really varies with the energy level with any given crowd on any given night.
I'm very proud that I can be myself. I'm not trying to be Arabic, I'm just being me, and I happen to be Arabic. I think that might be refreshing to some people, and it's a bit more realistic than these pantomime villains we've seen before.
Ever since I was a kid and growing up and watching things like the 'Naked Gun' movies, there was always this stereotype about how Arabs were perceived and portrayed. I've never watched those Arab villains in the movie and felt like that was me.
Montreal is my home town - I love it to death - but Toronto, I think, might have to be the best market in Canada. From a numbers perspective, it definitely is. The fans are incredible, and every time we go there, it sells out. It's awesome, and the fans are incredible.
Lifelong wrestling fans who are discovering NXT and being like, 'Wait, this is the kind of wrestling I used to like,' or, 'I like this' - it's succinct. It's an hour long. You've got some great wrestlers, and you've got great storytelling, and it's simple, and it's gritty.
The more work you put in, and the more you constantly and consistently give good performances against good opponents and constantly exceed people's expectations, the more you really endear yourself to the crowd. That's how your career takes off - it's just consistency and time.
If I had to explain what WrestleMania was to someone who's never seen wrestling, never seen WWE, never heard of the concept of WrestleMania, I would show them a five second video clip of The Rock and Hulk Hogan standing motionless in the ring while 70,000 people are jumping up and down.
The Full Sail crowd, it's a pretty unique and a pretty distinct environment. It's very close quarters and a bit more of what I'm used to from my days on the independents. But the truth is, I sometimes think that it's harder to win over a small crowd sometimes than it is to win over a big crowd.