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Obviously, signing on with Puma right when I turned pro, it's been a great fit for me to show off my colorful lifestyle as far as where I grew up and how I grew up, growing up on a public driving range and growing up around action sports my whole life. Not exactly the normal road that guys take to get to the PGA Tour.
People go into that arena, and they know the fix is in. They know what pro wrestling or sports entertainment is. That being said, they want it executed to the highest level so that they can suspend their disbelief and buy in, and so, in a world of make believe, you make people believe in you. It's as real as it can be.
I just had the absolute best luck in the world in terms of meeting The Young Bucks, and they might look like wild little rock stars who are irresponsible, but they are business geniuses. They set up the deal with Hot Topic, and they're going to be the first 7-figure downside characters that New Japan Pro Wrestling has.
Diesel coming down with shades, being seven feet tall with an all-black outfit on and the gloves; The Rock when he was wearing $800 Versace shirts; and Stone Cold, obviously, with the way he carried himself and the way he spoke and holding the microphone - these are the things that made me want to become a pro wrestler.
I recently declined to support a Conservative function because I'm so incensed about these wind turbines. Like all so-called climate-change doubters, I am very pro the environment, but I strongly believe that it is something that can only be cured locally. Some insane overall scheme isn't going to cure all the problems.
You realize, as time goes on, there is a certain expectation now in 2018 where fans want to see cool, exciting, hard-hitting sports entertainment or hard-hitting pro wrestling, and there are ways to give them that without necessarily putting yourself in the hospital that night or not being able to move the next morning.
I get to experience so much in my life as I travel around, and it's just such a great way to get to share that with people. All these sites, like Twitter and Make It Pro, give me such a very strong way to interact with people. It's easy to let people be part of your life and to keep all of your friends and fans together.
I'm not a gadget freak, so to say. I own an iPhone, which I love, and would sorely love to upgrade to MacBook Air from my current MacBook Pro. But what gets me going is the technology behind the gadgets, new websites, new apps. And I'm way too much into social media - FB, Twitter and Instagram are always open on my phone.
I dropped out of school to play poker, and at 21, I moved from Toronto to try my luck as a pro in Vegas. I ate the typical meat-heavy diet of most poker players in the '90s: burgers and steak, along with French fries, mash, and a bucket-load of wine, beer, and vodka. There was nothing fresh in my diet, and I felt terrible.
Except for a very few elite pro racers up front, the Dakar Rally is not, at heart, a contest among the competitors; the battle, instead, is between mankind - more precisely, Western mankind, with all its fire-breathing machinery and inexorable arrogance - and Africa, which has been proving itself untamable for centuries now.
In professional wrestling, I think that they want you to be bigger than life. It's almost like an over-acting type thing - whereas on the big screen, you're 35 feet and they've got a close-up of you to put it on the screen in the movie house. At 35 feet, it's more subtlety than the overboard drama that we do in pro wrestling.
When I was 12, I was living in Iowa, and I emailed so many wrestling schools, and one of them was actually in Boston. I joined it at 18 - the New England Pro Wrestling Academy. They were doing a fantasy camp. I was 17 about to turn 18. I told my mom, 'I'm 18 now. I just signed these papers by myself, and I'm going to do this.'
Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we're thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don't show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin', no matter what.
I think the free agent process is a little bit different because other major pro sports like the NBA or NHL, you're looking at 30 teams. You have 30 options. You don't really have that in this industry. There is one name that stands above all else, and that's WWE. So to really be on top, that's where you have to apply your trade.
When I started as a pro at United, I played alongside Bryan Robson in the A-team and later in the senior side. With Bryan, it didn't matter what level we were playing or which one of his team-mates got kicked. Within five minutes, you could guarantee that the opponent in question would be in a heap on the floor, courtesy of Bryan.
My eyesight had always been good but at school I went swimming one day and the chlorine affected me badly. I was almost blinded for two weeks and from there things deteriorated. Then at the World Championship in 2007 I realised I couldn't see the back of the pocket. It was one big blur. My first two seasons as a pro it was dreadful.
I'm in the NFL now, and it's nothing like what we did at USC. Not at all. The only difference between my college and other colleges is the games we won and the attention we got because of it. Obviously being in Los Angeles plays a huge role in the publicity. We don't have a football team in L.A., so we kind of are like the pro team.
My manager came up with the idea of taking a Pro Tool rig out on the road to record every night and I thought it was a great idea. I felt like it would be good to record over a certain period of time and then take the best performances of that collection of recordings. It appealed to me that it wasn't going to be from just one location.
I always had fun with my great friend Rey Mysterio Jr. I think it would be fantastic to have my very last match against someone like him because my very first match in WWE was against Rey Mysterio Jr. I know that all the pro wrestling fans, in particular the Mexican fans, would love to see Rey Mysterio against me for my very last match.
I was drafted by the New Orleans Saints and was tired of dealing with injuries. I just got tired of playing football, if you want to know the truth, and I was sitting on the floor at my father in-law's house and started to watch pro wrestling. I've watched it for a little bit before, so I thought to myself, 'You know what? I can do that!'
After I won my first amateur fight, I figured I would do fighting on the side while I was going to school. I got an offer after that amateur fight to take a professional fight. The opponent kind of wanted to have an easy win for her pro debt, and they said they'd pay me $1,500. I was like, 'Yeah, might as well get paid for what I was doing.'
I think it's something much bigger than just pro wrestling and the industry I work in. It's across all media. You look at Hollywood movies: there's not the Muslim hero or the guy who looks like me and has a name like mine who is portrayed in a positive manner or in a leading role. So, growing up, I didn't have a role model that looks like me.
You have to believe in yourself. But you know what? There's a fine line between believing in yourself and being delusional. And I'm sure there were a lot of people who thought I was being delusional when they saw me attempting to become a big shot in the world of pro wrestling. Luckily, it worked out: it doesn't work out for that many people.
On a very, very basic level, I'm definitely pro market because with the market comes the idea of the individual and the idea of specialisation, and I personally like being an individual and choosing my interactions. I don't see culture moving away from that, like back to a farming society. You couldn't do that with the amount of people we have.
You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It's hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football. You can't keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren't always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.
I thought the Rousey match was the best major league debut in the history of wrestling. They did the right thing at the right time at the right pace and took people on a roller coaster ride. That, to me, was a pro wrestling match. I couldn't find fault with it, except I wish that Ronda had come out with her game face on when she did her entrance.
When I went to the Pro Bowl, I went as a tight end. When I made the All Pro team, I made it as a tight end. When they introduced us and I ran out of the tunnel, they introduced me as a tight end. So how is that possible that now that my career is over, they say, 'Well, he put up stats like a wide receiver?' It's not my fault I was ahead of my time.
