The more established you are, the less likely you are to do something ridiculous, which is one reason I’m proud to put out a wrestling album. If you stop and you go, ‘Well, what if people don’t like it?,’ if you’re already established in what you do, that’ll strike fear into your heart.
When you talk about Mexican culture, it’s wrestling and soccer.
Well, actually, the Second City thing came about because I was taking a few improv classes there. I thought that the improv classes would help with my wrestling career, which it has.
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.
I didn’t want wrestling anymore; I wanted to not want it. But I couldn’t get a job anywhere, which was part of the reason I was homeless. I couldn’t get a job pumping gas. I couldn’t get a job working at a warehouse, I couldn’t get a job at Baskin Robbins, I couldn’t get a job anywhere.
Some people, they’re seeking elsewhere, looking elsewhere. I love WWE, but this is the type of wrestling that I grew up on. And every week, it’s bigger and bigger. And these shows are just getting more and more special.
The reason I don’t do the Flair Flop anymore is because women’s wrestling is being taken so seriously. I’ll only perform something comedic like that at a house show.
When I was a kid, I never thought much about football. I thought about following in my family’s footsteps and going into professional wrestling.
I love doing funny promos like the ones I did wrestling Rey Mysterio.
I’m a huge fan of wrestling, and I would like to see the position of women in the sport continue to improve, so if I can be a part of it, great.
Wrestling fans dictate policy; they really do. What direction each wrestler takes usually revolves around what the fans think of them.
My dream was to make it in life. I didn’t know how it was going to be. My brother guided me toward a wrestling ring, and I gravitated to it very quickly. It seemed like deja vu for me, and I said, ‘Wow, I think this might be it.’
There’s not as many passive wrestling fans as people would think. There are a lot of fans who just can’t get enough, and they’re almost more interested in what’s going on behind the scenes and the business of wrestling then they are, necessarily, of what’s going on inside of the ring.
Wrestling has its own culture. Every culture – Japan, Samoan, Indian, Korean – has wrestling, and wrestling is a worldwide mix.
I remember looking up wrestling schools at the age of 10, and I emailed so many people. The responses were that I had to be 16 or 18 to train, and that was a bummer.
Wrestling is one of the last truly rebellious American things left.
There are good wrestling journalists and bad wrestling journalists. That’s for sure.
I had been a wrestling fan since I was nine years old.
If you watch wrestling like I do, you watch for the wrestling. There’s so much talking. There’s some ‘twit’ back there with a pencil behind his ear writing down all these things for wrestlers to say.
Triple H was one of the main proponents of women’s wrestling.
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.
I’d never been interested in wrestling; I never even watched it. But one day I met Vince McMahon, and he asked me why no one had ever put me on television before.
With ‘Total Nonstop Deletion,’ my main goal is to give people the two hours of the most fun wrestling they have ever seen.
I had no aspirations after wrestling. I truly just assumed I would retire, grow a big beard, sit on my deck, and figure out what was next. If it was nothing, I was OK with that.
Even when I’m not wrestling, I still appreciate all my fans. I take all the compliments to heart.
Every time you have a huge fight in wrestling, in boxing, in MMA, both guys are sure they’re going to win. They really believe it.
Sometimes – and I don’t mean it disrespectfully – the easiest people to work in the wrestling business are the people in the locker room.
From the time I was 11 until I was 23 and met my wife, wrestling was all I cared about. It was an obsession, and that’s why I think I ended up making it. There was no other option for me.
Anyone can enjoy a wrestling match, but it’s how you feel about that person that takes it to another level.
I used to love wrestling Beth Phoenix, and I loved everything Beth Phoenix did in the ring because it was like, ‘Goodness. That beautiful woman is so strong.’
Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us.
Wrestling is such a competitive sport worldwide.
I love wrestling, but to wrestle just one style for the rest of my life seems like it would really hold me down creatively.
There were no wrestling schools in Ireland. It was completely unheard of.
Wrestling is a very demanding thing. But you’re also your own manager. You book your own rental cars, you book your own hotels. You carry your own bags. Your day begins as soon as you wake up, and it ends when you get to bed.
Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.
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.
The sort of stereotypical wrestling practice is that you’re doing burpees, and the coach is yelling at you to keep going, and you feel like you’re going to collapse, but you somehow make it through to the end.
I was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted – they were wrestling for cultural influence over me.
It’s kind of beating a dead horse if you’re talking about going out and saying wrestling’s fake, or this or that. People don’t want to hear that. They want to hear, they wanted to find an inside story.
Wrestling has grown so big… it’s almost a culture. And it’s a culture of all types of vibes, just like hip-hop has all kinds of vibes and rap has all kinds of vibes.
I’ve been wrestling with Kafka since I was an adolescent. I think he’s a great aphorist, a great letter writer, a great diarist, a great short story writer, and a great novelist – I’d put novelist last.
I know him as Terry. Hulk Hogan has probably done more for wrestling than anybody has. He got Hollywood involved in wrestling. Hogan was a big guy, but that big ol’ guy could move, and he knew how to get those people going. He had it all. He got pro wrestling to a whole new level.
With wrestling, you can’t describe how that connection with an audience happens. I can’t teach anybody how that happens. The bad things that have happened to me in WWE have made that connection stronger.
I was a quiet kid – I didn’t think I needed to be the funniest guy. I was always more of a listener. I went to 12 different schools, and I wasn’t the charismatic dude, but I was captain of the track team and wrestling team.
