Ive been chastised for going into mixed martial arts and backing out. But the reason I backed out was the terms - they wanted me ready to fight in four weeks, but youve got to be out of your mind. So I decided to go back to my roots, back to wrestling.

I think part of my journeys here and the places I was able to be at and the styles of wrestling I was able to experience and the friendships and just the world experience that I garnered before I came here to WWE helped me tremendously when I got here.

Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it. Countless people tell me, 'I got into wrestling because my grandfather watched it.' It was always there.

I had no coaching. I came out of the world of pro wrestling. In that job there are no agents, no publicists, no media training. It's just you and the crowd, and you have to be real to win them over. And if you don't, you're not gonna eat. And that's it.

Tennis is a game of angles. You never have time to figure the angles. It's practiced. It's so practiced that it becomes an instinct. You just know where to put the ball. You just feel it. It has been computed into your brain so many times ­ it is there.

I'm so confusing to wrestling promoters, and I'm used to that, but because I stayed in ECW and learned how to express myself the way, ah, that I could connect with my fans, it made my strong Rob Van Dam character uncompromising... and I owe that to ECW.

The best thing wrestling ever taught me was how to network with people, how to talk to people, how to deal with a lot of different kinds of people in different situations and being a good guy and a bad guy teaches you how to be able to have a thick skin.

Through wrestling, through the hard work and the sweat, through the victories and the defeats, we learn a great deal about ourselves. Wrestling shows you your limits, your weaknesses, your strengths and, ultimately, you grow because of what it shows you.

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

The Bullet Club keeps New Japan Pro Wrestling in the black. Far in the black. Because of me. I'm a part-timer in that company, and I hold the Tokyo Dome merchandising record and Osaka's. Funkos. Bucks on a career run. This Bullet Club may never be topped.

Now, Bad Ass, you run your mouth about Summerslam. Well, here's the situation. The Rock says this, if the Rock hits you he'll kill you. If he misses, the wind behind the punch will give you pneumonia and you'll die anyway, so the choice is yours, jabroni.

In 'The Third Hotel,' my narrator, Claire, is wrestling with this sense of perpetual unfinishedness. She's trying to make sense of her husband's death, how someone's life can just stop and not continue, and of the lack of resolution in her own inner life.

I'm wrestling almost every single day of the week. I'm fighting for so much more. I'm trying to capture a life here, a future. I'm trying to put my kid in college. There are so many things I'm doing. I'm representing the biggest wrestling family on earth.

When I was four or five, I had an older brother who got paralyzed from the neck down in junior high school. Some kid did a wrestling fall on him and hit his spine. We had to take care of him. I went from being the baby to not really being the baby anymore.

People are talking about women's wrestling, and that's all I've ever wanted since I was ten years old. I wanted people to talk about the women and all they could do. We're celebrating women's wrestling. People want to see us, and we're just doing our best.

They try to get me to watch The Condemned and I said NO,NO, NO. It's a sad fact Stone Colduh can't act he should GO, GO, GO. He likes to hang out in baaaaaars, I gave his movie zero staaaaaars. They try to make me watch The Condemned and I said uh NO,NO,NO.

I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.

The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.

Amateur wrestling, you can go by instinct. Pro wrestling, you have to memorize, and you have to go by what moves you said you were going to do. Sometimes you have to feel the crowd and do the moves at the right time and know the timing and tell a good story.

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.

I don't train for sports. I've never trained for sports. I train for life, and sport is just a part of that. So when I start training, that's lifestyle training and that's why I go through so many things, whether it's yoga, kickboxing, wrestling or swimming.

Jerry Lawler walks in here with his crown - DA DA DUM - Imperial Margerine - and talks about what he's going to do to me. Lawler, if you think you're going to beat me, if you think you can do ANYTHING to me, than you really are the king. King of FOOLS, jack!!

There is no doubt about it that it is more difficult for a woman to follow a career than for a man. Through the centuries his time has been considered more valuable, and he has consequently been excused from wrestling with many of 'life's minor damnabilities.

Trust me, ... I know where my heart is and my heart's right here. I'm going to keep doing everything because I love to do it, but I will never sacrifice my time between the ropes. That's no shot to anybody. Everybody's got different career paths. This is mine.

In pro wrestling, it's fake. People always get offended by that word. 'No, we like to say it's pre-determined.' For whatever reason, people get angry at 'fake'; 'pre-determined' eases the blow? It's fake. At the end of the day, it doesn't really mean anything.

My favorite thing about 'Saturday Night's Main Event,' it was that one time where I could stay up late with my dad and four brothers, and we would all beat the tar out of each other while the show was on, and it was all okay because my dad was a wrestling fan.

I busted my tail for so long, I'm just glad it's getting recognized now as part of the WWE. Because let's face it, the WWE is the biggest company out there when it comes to wrestling. I'm just happy that I'm being recognized as somebody who works hard, I guess.

Know what is in your heart. But definitely go to school and learn as much as you can, and if wrestling is still what you want, find a good wrestling school and kind of learn as much information about it as you can. If I did it, this tiny thing, anyone can do it.

We wrestle with our own opponents on a daily basis. These challengers can come in numerous forms whether it be a physical challenge, emotional, or even relational issues that can overtake us. No matter what opponent we are wrestling against we can be UNSTOPPABLE.

I am increasingly attracted to restricting possibility in the poem by inflicting a form upon yourself. Once you impose some formal pattern on yourself, then the poem is pushing back. I think good poems are often the result of that kind of wrestling with the form.

I talk about things I'm passionate about. I talk about the wrestling business, because I love wrestling. I just love it. If I can just have good conversation with a guy who was a bada** wrestler, we're talking about something that's very near and dear to our heart.

The Bible is not a book that you can open and say, 'Now, Lord, put some magic into my soul that will open up the meaning of this book.' There is only one way really to understand the Word, and that is through wrestling with the circumstances and happenings of life.

I think the biggest wrestling match-up I have is how to respond to the word "quirky." Or the alternate, "nerdy." Both are essentially benign to the reader, but if you're a writer just sort of involved in your creative process, they seem like very small motivations.

Anytime you do anything with Ric Flair, it's kind of a strange and different atmosphere until you know that's what he's going to do, and it couldn't be any better. Besides myself, he was probably the next in line as it pertains to credibility in the wrestling world.

Your humble critic confesses that he has been wrestling with 'weight issues' since leaving college lo these, uh, several years ago, so it's hard to be receptive to the moralistic scolding and patronizing encouragement offered endlessly by the allegedly well-meaning.

I grew up in rural Missouri about two hours north of St. Louis, and if the wind was blowing right on a Saturday night, I could catch All Star Wrestling out of Kansas City, which was run by Bob Geigel, and some of the stars there were Bulldog Bob Brower and Ray Candy.

I'm continually wrestling with the idea that there are certain things in this world that simply don't fit. The idea that I have this longing for beauty and truth, and yet I'm also attracted to things that are very dark the lies that exist within me and outside of me.

I have an older brother and older sister. My older sister is the girliest girl on the planet, so I just hated everything about that. I did anything my brother did. He actually got me into wrestling. I watched it because he did, and I played video games because he did.

In high school, during lunchtime I would go in the room where the wrestling mats were and try different flips and different moves. Like windmills. I just started mixing martial arts with jazz and contemporary stuff and it would get mashed together and became my style.

I grew up wrestling and playing football where, at the end of the game, you have a score and you're either the winner of loser. There's no score in acting, but you qualify your level of success by the people that you work with and the amount of exposure that you have.

You watch Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather fight, Floyd can just throw a few punches, or he can do a lot of defense; he can slip a few punches, let Conor get a few shots in. You can't really do that in wrestling without getting scored on or putting yourself at risk.

As you evolve, you lean that wrestling is not necessarily about stunts or spots. You need to go out and show the audience that they can love you for the persona you are - not because of the risk you're willing to take or the jeopardy you're willing to put your body in.

I got a bad conduct discharge, was at home for a few months in late '99, and basically said, 'Dad, I want to give wrestling a shot. I sure as hell don't wanna go to college, and the Marine Corps wasn't for me. And I need to make some money, so let's see if I can do it.'

As you evolve, you learn that wrestling is not necessarily about stunts or spots. You need to go out and show the audience that they can love you for the persona you are - not because of the risk you're willing to take or the jeopardy you're willing to put your body in.

My father, my grandfather, the wrestling business, the WWE in particular, has really given me everything. A lot of happiness, my kids are taken care of, my wife is happy, they get to travel. A lot of pluses come with it; the Hall Of Fame would just be the cherry on top.

Professional wrestling has moved so far to the athleticism side and people are overly indulging in the stunt monkeys, but that's why there are so many injuries all the time. You need to break open your soul, break open your mind, and remember that pro wrestling is magic.

That's one of the things I always tried to do as champ. If you saw me at house shows, I was going to make you think I was going down. If I was wrestling Kane, I could lose. I'm wrestling Batista, I could lose. I'm wrestling Big Show, Undertaker, you name it, I could lose.

We want to offer people a show that doesn't insult their intelligence, and really, it's a fun show to watch. It's a fast-paced show to watch and has the best wrestling action, but also has the best wrestling personalities. I want everyone to know that AEW is for everybody.

Difficulty is a nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who rocks her foster children roughly, but rocks them in strength and athletic proportion. The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.

I still recall the first time I laid eyes on Ric. Dusty Rhodes and Dick Murdoch were wrestling, at the time, in Minnesota, and they took a liking to this kid who'd been hanging around the matches. That kid was Ric Flair, and they brought him to my ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

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