There’s a pressure to be the wrestler that you are, that character that you’ve created 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It’s tough for wrestlers sometimes to sort of have that separation between person and character.
I did a year and a half of independent wrestling before I got into the WWE. It was nothing really. I didn’t make the towns. I don’t even say I was an indy wrestler.
My father is the reason I’m a wrestler today. He was trained by Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart, and competed under the names Billy the Kid and Elvis Wesley on the Florida Independent scene.
I have been a fan of wrestling since I was about 8 years old. In 2012, I went to my first WWE show in Melbourne, Australia, and knew that my already existing desire to be a wrestler wasn’t going away anytime soon.
I’m a second-generation professional wrestler. My family, the Rhodes family, has been wrestling for 50-odd years.
I don’t know anything about CM Punk. I’d never even heard of him until he was mentioned in UFC. I wouldn’t know him if I walked past him in the street, I don’t know… he might be a good wrestler but there are people in the UFC who are just good wrestlers.
Although not considered a martial art, boxing is really a martial art. It’s a very limited martial art as long as you agree to just box… but in an actual physical fight against someone who’s just a wrestler, you’re going to get killed.
I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn’t have to translate.
Ric, I feel like he hasn’t changed up for no one. He’s been the same since Day 1, since he was in the limelight as a pro wrestler. Even now, just his mentality and who he is: Find who you are and just be that. He’s always being him. That’s what I admire the most about Ric Flair.
I do feel like since I am a third-generation wrestler, I do have to hold myself – and there are a lot of people that expect certain things out of me – I’m an athlete, and I’m a top athlete.
I wasn’t some stud athlete at school that was destined to be a professional wrestler. I was just an insecure little guy that didn’t want to go to school because I had zits on my upper lip.
I always knew I wanted to be a pro wrestler for as long as I can remember.
A guy who I always said was my favorite wrestler is Rey Mysterio.
The acclaim I’m getting for ‘The Wrestler’ means everything in the world to me. But it also means I can’t take my foot off the gas pedal.
I want to fight Cormier, that’s been a fight I’ve been trying to get forever. I can go in there and take him down. I can threaten him in ways he hasn’t been threatened. I don’t think he’s fought a wrestler like me.
To have a Japanese wrestler standing as the face of professional wrestling, there’s only one person for that spot, and it’s me.
I honestly was supposed to always be a wrestler. I was never hired into any business as an announcer. That was just something I ended up falling into.
The best wrestler in the world is me.
I’m a wrestling fan – before I was a wrestler, I was a wrestling fan. I like watching wrestling.
I was a wrestler. I played football, lacrosse. After high school, I got into jujitsu. I boxed my whole adult life.
I remember, one teacher in Year 11 asked the class what everyone wanted to do when they grow up, and I said, ‘I want to be a professional wrestler.’ The teacher laughed and said to be serious.
For a wrestler, I think it is much better to fight in the ring than in the cage. The cage has more advantage for the stand up fighter.
Pro wrestling has always been my passion. I always wanted to be a pro wrestler.
My favorite wrestler of all-time is Johnny Valentine. I believe him to be the best bad guy ever in wrestling and he is my absolute favorite.
If you can believe it, I had no intentions of being a wrestler.
In Mexico, to become a pro wrestler, you have to have a wrestling license, and to get a license, you have to pass a wrestling test.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the best wrestler in the world and can do every move perfectly; if you don’t connect with the crowd or sell well or have good promos, nobody cares.
I’m always prepared. I’ve wrestled every kind of wrestler that there is, I’ve been in every situation that there possibly has been.
I think being the only Pakistani wrestler in WWE will bring some attention from the country as well. I’ll do my best to do Pakistan proud and give them something to cheer about.
You have to consider, I’m a full-time professional wrestler, and Stephen Amell is a celebrity, and yet we still managed to beat two full-time professional wrestlers.
I would love to have gotten into it with Harley Race. He was such a good wrestler and rough and tough. We wrestled at the same time but never each other. And wrestling Sting would have been something I would have enjoyed.
In my past, I’ve always had the physical abilities. They were always there, but sometimes the mental side of it – I was younger coming in as a wrestler, didn’t know what the hell I was doing on my feet.
I think I was always so resistant to coloring my hair because, you know, when my dad was still alive, it’s so easy for a second- or third-generation wrestler to just copy their predecessor. The hardest thing you can do is try and carve out your own legacy.
My dad was my favorite wrestler growing up, obviously.
I was a true wrestler. I was a Division I national champion. I came into the business wanting one thing and one thing only, and that was to be the champion, and I wasn’t going to let anybody stand in my way. I think there was one guy that had a problem with that, and that was Undertaker.
When you see a guy reading off a teleprompter or a mental teleprompter, just trying to recite a script or trying to look up in the air when you forget a line. It is hard to suspend disbelief when the wrestler doesn’t believe in the real-life situation that is unfolding.
For me, the only way I know how to do this is to be myself. I actually learned that from ‘The Dream’ Dusty Rhodes. I was trying to be this wrestler, and I was trying to be cool, and Dusty literally told me, ‘You’ve got to be yourself.’ That’s really how Bayley started, and that is what brought me this far.
The whole journey of being a wrestler is also a journey of finding yourself and who you are. If it feels natural to you, it’s natural to me because I’m just being myself every time I’m out there.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pro wrestler. Other kids wanted to be cops and astronauts, but I wanted to be Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake, and Jake ‘The Snake.’ I wanted to be those guys! I used to tape matches on my trampoline and body-slam my brother.
Sometimes I’m out in public and people are like ‘you’re a wrestler?’ and they kind of ask me with a little question in their voice, like ‘oh I didn’t know that WWE had wrestlers like you. I’m going to start watching.’
Wrestling fans dictate policy; they really do. What direction each wrestler takes usually revolves around what the fans think of them.
I have been a wrestler now for 12 years, and now I am reaching this peak at the top of the mountain – WrestleMania.
John Smith from Oklahoma State was the greatest American wrestler of all time.
It’s hard to pick out one particular wrestler.
I made a joke to my wife that if this acting thing doesn’t work out I can always be a pro wrestler, as a joke. She found out about a school that was about thirty minutes from where we lived, and she made the appointment for me.
I think, at every professional wrestler’s heart, there’s a fan.
It seems every bouncer, every bodybuilder wants to become a wrestler. Every day, people will come up to me and ask about it. So few actually make it but if you do make it you can now make into the millions. You have to know your character and have a lot of ability.
I grew up a wrestler; for a long time in Oklahoma I was a wrestler.
The Vince McMahon tell me I am the best Middle Eastern wrestler ever. He tell me I need new name to show how strong I am like the iron. He want me to become like the Shah. He call me the Sheik.
Do you remember the wrestler Andre the Giant? Famous. He had acromegaly.
I like to go surfing because I want to feel the ocean and experience nature, and nature fixes my balance, and this life is crazy sometimes, so it helps a wrestler’s life because a wrestler’s life is crazy sometimes.
In fact, I was voted Prom Queen by my classmates in my senior year. So I went from being a wrestler to the prom queen in a year.
It’s just one of those things. When you’re a wrestler you’re thinking about one guy, yourself, your character and whatever guy it is you’re working with. When you’re a writer and you’re kind of in a booking type role, you’re thinking about the entire roster so you’re thinking about wrestling 24 hours a day.
Clearly, I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but I got laughed at. I was kind of the runt. I was never the tallest kid or the biggest kid or the strongest kid, so I would get laughed at when I’d say it.
OK, if he’s a grappler, good for me, I know what to do. If he’s a kickboxer, I gotta get in a clinch and move a certain way. If he’s a karate man, he moves a different way, but I’m still going to have to clinch. So, a sumo wrestler, I have to clinch. It’s just, how I get there, how I move it.
