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There is this great, great wrestler, who never really got an opportunity to be a star, named Len Denton: he was a masked guy called The Grappler. He was one of my favorite guys to ever wrestle, and it was just a tremendous pleasure to step in the ring with him.
I was really confident when I left WWE. I was confident that I would have a good time, and I was confident that I could wrestle differently than perhaps people saw me in the last few years with WWE, but I definitely wasn't prepared for this level of everything.
There were days I'd wrestle at 9 o'clock, and afterward, I often didn't shower and would just throw on sweatpants. I had my police gear in the car and would rush to get to the station by 10:30, clean myself off as best I could, and be ready for my shift by 10:59.
I worked on trying to get to Mexico, which was the first thing that I really wanted to do, but a couple of my girlfriends thought that I should learn how to wrestle before I go to Mexico, so I should try out in Japan. That is how I kind of got over there in Japan.
When I was training, I trained with my younger brother Brady. I would wrestle some of my friends, who I had grown up with, which showed me some moves, but it was never a full on match. When I went to competitions, there were other girls, so I always wrestled girls.
For Americans, of course, it's football, basketball, and baseball. We live for it. In many ways, it sums up who we are. In Iran, it's all about wrestling. The patriotism toward their country comes out in the way they wrestle, so it makes sense why they're the best.
When I was younger, I used to wrestle, and I feel that it contributed to my athletic ability because as a wrestler you have to be an all-encompassed athlete. You need stamina, strength, endurance and mental capacity. You also have to learn how to adapt in any situation.
If you're a fan of Indie wrestling at all, you can go back to, I think, 2007-2008, and you can see me wrestle CHIKARA. And you can see me wrestle in a tank top, and you can see me wrestle in a tank top that doesn't look like the one I have in WWE. But it's the same one.
If I had my career to do over again, I think I would wrestle under my real name, John Hennigan, because if there was some sort of brand test associated with professional wrestling, I would hardcore fail that test because I have so many names, it's confusing to me, even.
Not to say that I saw myself in the Iron Sheik, but our whole family would gather around the TV on Saturday and watch the Iron Sheik wrestle. And he was the bad guy, so everyone else was booing him and cheering whoever he was fighting - it was the opposite in our house.
We never had the most money, but my parents always did their best to take care of me and my brother. I had a real small but tight group of friends, and we would just ride our bikes all day after school and play video games, or we would actually wrestle out in the backyard.
I've been talking to certain wrestlers on the phone lately, and certain female wrestlers that were huge stars ten years ago, and the first thing I ask them is 'do you still want to work?' Do they want to talk, or do they want to wrestle or do something else in the business?
It's really cool, the opportunities that NXT brings. Who would ever thought that Jushin Liger would be in this company, Samoa Joe, Sami Zayn? It's crazy. Man, I don't know, bring anybody. I want to wrestle with everybody. Even I want to wrestle Jushin Liger, so I'm jealous.
I put myself in a position where I made wrestling an option for me. I don't have to wrestle. I don't have to take another shot for the rest of my life if I don't want to. I have good enough hands, good enough boxing, good enough timing to strike with anybody in our division.
When I'm training, I come to the gym twice a day and sometimes three times. My coach and I make our schedule: wrestle in the morning, strike and conditioning, jujitsu later. And we mix it up as well. I always move everything around. I don't keep everything the same every day.
I couldn't wait to be an adult woman, and I'm glad I felt that way as a kid because, when I grew up, I realised I live in a world where the female form is really disrespected, and society is often trying to wrestle the female form into a shape that looks more like a young boy.
It was great to get rid of the long hair. It's such a pain that, if you look at it, it's always wet when guys wrestle: you dump gallons of conditioner in it to keep it wet so you're not choking on it. You have all kinds of stuff in it, and just maintaining it is a lot of work.
The presidents and the founding fathers and all of the people we sort of raise up as false idols, we don't wrestle with the fact that many of these were brilliant men, but they were also men with deep prejudices against people of color, against indigenous people, against women.
The Divas Revolution didn't have the great start that I wanted it to have, but through time, it has got to where I want it to be, starting with the Triple Threat Match at Wrestle Mania. Our faces were in the middle of the stadium, which proves we are getting equal opportunities.
I think one of the most consistent answers for any of the girls when they're asked 'who do you want to wrestle' is Beth Phoenix - but that was never really the case for me, as far as an opponent or dream opponent. For me, that was always Molly Holly, Lita and Awesome Kong/Kharma.
Fortunately for me, I discovered Ring of Honor. And I saw guys who were much smaller in stature but were putting on these amazing matches that I had never seen in WWE before. So I thought, at the very least, I'd love the chance to be able to wrestle in a company like that someday.
As badly as everybody feels like I'm a sellout for one thing or another, I guess, ultimately, when it came to wrestling, I just wanted to wrestle where I want to wrestle. And something had to be bigger and more important than the money, and for me, it was the time inside that ring.
You see it from my area, from any area, really, so many who want to be great and have the drive, but don't have the resources. I'm very blessed that I have a family that was financially stable enough to get me to tournaments and camps and to practices so I could wrestle year-round.
When I used to wrestle professionally, I preferred being the bad guy known as 'The Heel;' you would get to 'work the crowd,' getting them to hate you and want to see you lose, while the good guy 'Babyface' would walk in, smile and shake hands with a few kids, and his acting job was done.
My son wanted to become a wrestler because I was a wrestler. I was his hero. I didn't want them to wrestle. It was the same reason my dad didn't want me to wrestle. It's not the wrestling. It's the lifestyle that goes with it and the demands it puts on you. It's not so bad for single guy.
I'm just glad when I was fighting for us to wrestle I would always have people tell me, 'Gail, women's wrestling is for the bathroom breaks, you know they really don't want to see it.' I would get discouraged a little bit but I was very adamant, so I'm glad that we girls proved them wrong.
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.
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.'
Incumbency adds a layer of advantage on top of this party dominance. But rather than foster an environment in which members of Congress feel free to buck popular sentiment and wrestle seriously with the problems confronting the country, it reinforces the ideological divide between the parties.
I keep trying to convince people that I'm OK to wrestle, and I think that's probably the hard part. A lot of times I'm trying to convince myself, too, that I can wrestle. It's really hard, because the concussion issue is very subjective, and that's the part that a lot of people don't understand.
That's what governors do, they wrestle with the issues, they find solutions and they move the agenda forward. At the appropriate time we'll talk about all of these issues, while remembering that our party is a big tent party. We lose when we try to become exclusive to one particular set of issues.
I think Sting would be denying his fans a great moment if Sting did not step into WWE competition at least once. I have always been a huge admirer of what Sting brings to the table and his relationship with his audience, and I would be dramatically disappointed if Sting does not wrestle a WWE match.
There's an awful lot of future out there, and what you got to do, is you go to out and grab it, wrestle it to the ground, accept the challenges, and then decide. You've got the skills. You've got the knowledge. You've got the love, and you're capable of moving forward and making a great life yourself.
'That's What She Said' is not Hollywood's standard picture of women: preternaturally gorgeous, wedding obsessed, boy crazy, fashion focused, sexed up 'girl' women. These are real women, comically portrayed, who are trying to wrestle with the very expectations of womanhood that Hollywood movies set up.
One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God's role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day.
I show up in a playoff game, I have my sideline sheet. I can't even spit plays out, I get so excited. I mean, you get nervous. These are critical, do-or-die situations. Third down and 1, Red Zone, what do I call? Two minute drill? Are we going to go no huddle? These are decisions that you wrestle with.
For me, the reason I keep working out and want to get bigger and focus on staying fit is because when you do fall it's easier to tighten up and not get hurt. I also wrestle, and that helps me a lot with taking a fall. A lot of what I do at the end of they day are things that will help me to not get hurt.
I got down to business and started writing furiously. I wore my fingers down to a callous state writing with every Tom, Dick and Harry around the world, including a chap named Charlie who plays for a man named Bob, to wrestle my emotions and bring out the raw grit hiding in my tightly guarded sub-conscious.
I think I was given a gift to wrestle. And I think when I came back, I had a much better appreciation of that. And I believe the way I went about doing it made me better at it. I didn't identify myself with the job as I did so much in the '90s. In the '90s, I didn't know who I was other than 'the wrestler.'
I had to weave and play around with a honey bear, you know, and I could wrestle with him a little bit, but there's no way you can even wrestle a honey bear, let alone a grizzly bear that's standing ten feet to eleven feet tall! Can you imagine? But it was fascinating to work that close to that kind of animal.
I only ever get to work with Naito once a year. I'd love to wrestle him again. Yeah, he's good, for sure. The person I've never worked before in a New Japan ring - and I'd be happy to get the chance and show the difference of styles - is Zack Sabre, Jr., so that'd be another one. Yeah, he's one of my favorites.
I'm not a glory guy or anything like that, but it was such a great pleasure for me to wrestle Bob Backland, the champion at the time. He was such an awesome guy and such a great champion, and it was such a privilege to be able to wrestle him so early on in my WWF career in a title match at Madison Square Garden.
In addition to being gifted athletically and being the strongest guy in the room, Cesaro is very smart upstairs. He can go in the back and wrestle a match out in his head, then he'll add his Cesaro-isms in the ring to really make the match special. He knows exactly where to put things and make a match explosive.
Getting ready to wrestle is like getting ready for a car crash. Getting ready to work with Brock Lesnar is like knowing you're going to get hit by a bus and the bus is going to back over you. If I'm going to work 'WrestleMania,' 16 weeks out I have to start training like I'm Mayweather getting ready for a fight.
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.
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
When you get to the point where you're established enough that people link you with something, especially being an action hero babe, it's awesome. Because then you can fight the battles and have the crossbows and wrestle with swords and ride the horses because you're already believable; people see you in that genre.
My character is just an extension of me. The in-ring work, the things that will always be said about me: Big, overbearing, powerful, in-your-face, couldn't wrestle - I never needed to wrestle. Why did I need to learn how to wrestle? Did Hulk Hogan need to learn how to wrestle? Nope. Is Hulk Hogan a good athlete? Nope.
My dream is to leave this business on my own terms, and if it were my terms, I would love to do the Royal Rumble. I would love to do Wrestle Mania in New Orleans, because I had so many matches there over the years working for Mid-South. I was in the ring with Muhammad Ali in the Superdome. To close it there would be great.
I think we have to face right in the center of the hurricane, if you will, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s foibles and faults. I think that we do no good to ourselves and do no honor to him by pretending that he did not fail, that he did not wrestle greatly and, at times, surrender to his own sins and his own faults and failures.