A good friend of mine, Maria Menounos, she's kind of like a mentor to me. She dabbled in WWE and pro wrestling, and she said 'This is the perfect opportunity for you.' Once I started doing my research about the competition and the company, I fell in love with WWE even more.

When I was growing up, I thought there was only WWE. That's it. One promotion in the world. And then, as I grew up, I found that there's local wrestling. There's WCW, there's ECW. In Mexico, there are the luchadores. And then, finally, I realized there's wrestling in Japan.

Being part of WWE is beautiful. You're on the biggest stage of them all. You're living well; you're making good money, and the only flipside to that is that you're on the grind, and you've got to be committed. You've got to make sure to understand what being on the grind is.

Bayley is a dream chaser. She's grown up watching the product, wrestling, WWE, everything. She knows everyone, from top to bottom, all the history. She's been motivated since she was 10-years-old and is finally here, trying to pursue the dream, live the dream to the fullest.

Growing up watching WWE, they used to have bra-and-panties matches or pillow fights, and that's why my mom didn't want me to watch wrestling. But when my parents divorced, I was able to watch wrestling again, and that's when I started to really get into wrestlers like Ivory.

At one point, I left Mexico to continue my career globally, and a new star came about. He is known now as Myzteziz, but back then he was known as Mistico, and then Sin Cara when he joined WWE. I would have to say the fans, in their eyes, see a lot of similarities between us.

I've worked my entire career to try to broaden the perception of the WWE. A lot of folks think because we're so entertaining and oftentimes have such wild and well-defined characters that it's all we are. It has kind of been my life's work to tell the public that's not true.

I loved WWE , but in the end, I was unhappy. It was just like planning an escape from a maximum security prison. I'd released a list of potential opponents online, so when the 90-day no-compete clause was up, I had matches booked on good faith. I thought about the follow-up.

I'm going to call WWE like I call everything. Yes, I'm going to be passionate. Yes, I'm going to be excited, but at the same time, I'm hoping to get better as a storyteller, and I'm hoping to complement the people I work with who have been doing this a lot longer than I have.

When we started training with WWE, coaches were impressed and asked if we had had boxing training. I said no, it was all soccer. As a defender, I had to learn to stay on my feet, track backwards, and I feel all the movement I do in the ring was helped by my soccer background.

In WWE, they're real big on letting you sink or swim, and they let you go out there, and they're going to give you the stick and a live mic in front of a packed house and millions watching at home, and if you're not prepared for that moment, you're going to go down in flames.

Ronda Rousey is coming to WWE at such a great time because we're a big family here, and we try to help everyone succeed. She has passion for it, which is awesome, and she respects the business, which is awesome. Everyone has been helping her and walking her through everything.

In my twisted brain, I truly believe that nobody ever really dies, as long as the people that he or she touched continue to spread their legacy. I miss Eddie Guerrero. Eddie Guerrero was a great man. So right now, I don't want to hear 'CM Punk', you know the name I wanna hear.

Many kids going through tough times watch WWE on TV and tell me that they feel inspired to be strong and brave because of us. That makes me feel the need to be an even better person because I feel like I'm a role model to them, and that's a responsibility I don't take lightly.

A character like mine, there is only so much you can do from a storyline perspective. You can be that heel authority figure, which I was for a few years in WWE and WCW, and it's interesting, and it's fun, but after a while, you've kind of done everything you can do creatively.

One of my goals is definitely to motivate the youth towards sports. Whether it's arts or academics, I just want to let them know that anything is possible. To think that I grew up as a WWE fan and now I'm a WWE champion proves that through hard work anything really is possible.

Two months before I re-signed with WWE, I decided just out of nowhere that I will start dieting, to work on my body and train harder. I started focusing more. Two months later, WWE called me back to re-sign. That was not a coincidence but the universe telling me that I am ready.

Are you not aware that my profession involves beating the living hell out of some poor-unfortunate wearing nothing more than a pair of green lycra knicks? I'm practically naked each time I step in the ring. But I tend to cover up my privates in public. No one likes ginger pubes.

Before I signed with WWE, I thought my athletic career was done. I was going into the finance industry and I just thought I couldn't compete any more. But the mind is a really powerful thing and you can unlock your potential if you choose to ignore what your mind is telling you.

I came up in the U.K., which is a very catch-as-catch-can style, and then I somehow ended up in Japan and spent eight years there learning strong style. I got to spend some time in Mexico learning the lucha libre style, and the WWE is a hybrid style of everything mixed together.

AJ Styles, he is very well established, very well known. He had a name that was very well known. I would think, outside of WWE, his might be the most outside-recognized wrestling name in the world. Samoa Joe as well. He could have debuted straight to Raw or SmackDown, absolutely.

Impact has always had a focus on their Knockouts. Back when WWE was not so focused on their Divas, Impact was still focused on their Knockouts. They were actually the stronger women's division for a long time, and that was the place to watch a match more than a couple of minutes.

I didn't come over with a comfy sponsor that took care of my visa and paid me a good amount of money right away. I came over here with nothing, the little bit of money that I had saved up, and it was struggle and plight to get some recognition and then finally make it to the WWE.

The biggest thing here in WWE is that if they see some really valuable qualities in you, they're really going to do their best to maximize them and put you into the scenarios and into the situations where that's going to make the most impact. For me, they've definitely done that.

My years in the WWE, a lot of stuff came out that you're not even aware of because they come out with it so fast, and there's so much of it. It's tough, certainly, to have any hands-on association with it, so I was happy to be able to have some input into the 'Deuce Brand' watch.

I can literally count on one and a half hands how many people in WWE treated me the same pre-Mark and post-Mark. Michelle McCool didn't change, I'm still me. There were a ton of people that found out I was dating Mark and was like, 'Oh, I better change my tune and be super nice.'

WWE has not called me to be a part of any roster. My relationship with WWE stands with the video game and the video game only. If they want to extend an olive branch and pick up the phone, then I will make a comment on that once they do it. But prior to that, nothing's been done.

I have a really strong opponent in Randy Orton. A former multi-time world champion. He's held just about every title under the sun. And he's done it all in a major way. He's basically wreaked havoc and ran roughshod over the WWE for quite some time. Some people might forget that.

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.

There's a lot of guys in WWE - you would know who they are - you know you're going to see the same thing every single match. You know you're going to hear the same thing every time they pick up a microphone. You know John Cena is never going to get mad at you no matter what you do.

Vince McMahon - he's third generation, and his enormous empire, he ran it much like the territories. The buck stopped with him; he made the decisions. That's how a company should be run. Feast or famine, right or wrong, the WWE is driven off his decision making and always has been.

My uncle wrestled in the late '80s to early '90s, and I was too young to see his matches. However, he has always supported me in my journey, and I think that without his support, all this would not have been possible. He taught me a lot, and he is the reason that I'm a WWE wrestler.

When I first arrived in WWE after having a somewhat high profile on-air role in WCW, it was WrestleMania season. In a way, I was perceived to be the voice of WCW after the Ted Turner/TBS buyout of Jim Crockett Promotions. That 'claim to fame' did not endear me to many WWE personnel.

Doing these movies I've done with WWE, it's a different pace. It's a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of sitting around and like the day of the pay-per-view, when you're thinking about what you can do, and then you get the payoff, the reward, that night. It's just a different animal.

Your Olympic Hero is scheduled to wrestle a match against the man they call the big red retard; not that I have anything against retarded people cause I don't. As a matter of fact, I have a lot of retarded fans out there that admire and respect your Olympic Hero, and I wish them well.

I grew up with WWE and New Japan, but when I started traveling to Germany, I had the chance to train with people like Christian Eckstein and Tony St. Clair. They were two of the cornerstones of the German 'beer tent' wrestling era, when they'd have 30-day tournaments in the same town.

Oh my God, you're serious. Honey, I am a six time Women's Champion, if you get into the ring with me it will not be for a Lingerie Pillow Fight, it will not be to shoot t-shirts. If you get into the ring with me I will end your career just like that. Are you sure that's what you want?

I think the way WWE Studios is going now - they're going away from action, doing more drama, more comedy - it will open a lot of people's eyes. Because a lot of people see big guy, big frame: action superstar. We've proven, especially with 'Legendary,' that that is not always the case.

I was at an ESPN event in the United States, the awards ceremony, and I got approached by the WWE. I had just retired, and, it's a form of competition, but of course, it's also scripted, so I don't know if I'd be willing to relive that. Perhaps for a special event, so I could taste it.

It's always important for people to be able to watch WWE, especially because it's a global product, it's important for people all over the world to be able to look at the screen and see somebody who looks like them doing great things. And in turn, that inspires them to do great things.

The Dream didn't need to struggle. He's homegrown talent, straight from the WWE Performance Center, trained by the best coaches in the world: Norman Smiley, who's known from coast-to-coast, Matt Bloom, head trainer, and I am protege of the one-and-only The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels.

A lot of people are successful in this business because of a catchphrase or athletic ability or charisma or wrestling; Ric Flair is the personification of all of those things, much like his daughter Charlotte, as she is already a multiple-time champion after only a few years in the WWE.

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 Wonderful pistachios campaign is a great example - I don't involve myself with a project I don't feel passionate about. I could talk your ear off about internal statistics for WWE and what we have planned for the future. Why do I know that stuff? Because I like to do all that stuff.

I wasn't featured in NXT. I never had a TakeOver match. I never held a title. I wasn't a featured athlete. I knew, going in to SmackDown Live, I had to kick down the door and take every opportunity for what it was, and sometimes in WWE - and in life - those opportunities don't come back.

After 10 years TNA talent still have an inferiority complex. If you don't think that you work for the BEST COMPANY EVER then nobody else will! As a performer you hav to act and project that where you work is the pinnacle of competition! If not then the whole place just seems second rate.

I've had people say to me, 'How dare you have a Twitter,' you know, with my gimmick, I guess, and I just say, 'It's 2017.' It'd be hard to find someone in America who doesn't have a phone that has Twitter capabilities. So as a WWE Superstar, I think it's OK that I have a Twitter, people.

John Cena's match with me, the one that kind of got him hired with WWE, I remember they were there to look at John, obviously. He looked great - he was like the blue-chipper - and John was a good friend of mine, so I had no problem whatsoever helping him kind of highlight and do his thing.

A whole bunch of people told me that if I went to WWE, I'd never make it. But it's like I never heard them. I never listened. To me, I'm exactly where I belong. I feel like I was born to do this. Whatever your walk in life is, you pick what you want to be, then go ahead and be the best one.

I don't care where you go or what company you work for - and I've pretty much worked for them all - WWE by far is the most brutal road schedule in the world. It takes a special kind of individual to navigate that and be able to thrive in that environment. It's a challenge that I've enjoyed.

Share This Page