Well, being at a big school, I had to perform every night. I had to deal with a lot of fans, media stuff, interactions, relationships, you know, just to build myself and show how much I care about Kentucky.
For anyone watching Ring of Honor out of the gate, they knew when they were watching an ROH event that they were watching a different level of wrestler from what they had seen.
I believe the UFC knows what they're watching and looking for, so I always try and put on a great show for everybody watching and try to go out there and finish my opponent and do something exciting. I believe a lot of people come out to watch me and see me perform.
I have had fans make me the big picture collages of the photo books; I have had fans send me birthday cakes... sing to me on my voicemail. I have had fans flash me. I have had older fans give me their bras and underwear onstage.
Any one of my shoes that I had, you knew that, night in, night out, I gave my teammates and my fans everything that I had.
Pro wrestling is not fake; it's sports entertainment. We go out there and we perform, and a lot of what we do out there is real, but we're not going to insult anyone's intelligence - there is a predetermined winner. It's just the fans don't know who it is, and that's what makes it so intriguing.
All I had to do was go out and perform. One of the hardest things was doing those back flips, where you had to jump up and land on the top rope. It's precision movement.
I think I had kind of an advantage. When I was growing up, my dad had just got out of jail and he had a great record collection. He had - it was all - these were the songs. So I heard a lot of these songs, like, my whole life, so for me it was easy. I already knew what I was going to sing.
For some reason, the fans got behind me, and I don't know exactly why that is. I wasn't supposed to main event WrestleMania XXX, but the fans were so vocal about it that the fans had no choice but to put me in the match. I've had a lot of lucky breaks.
I knew that the Mets had never had a no-hitter. I never had one. This is very special. I knew this means a lot to New York.
I was heart broken, scared, I had a lot of anxiety, I was worried, I felt weak, and I had no idea how I was ever going to come up with the strength. But I just closed my eyes, and took a blind leap. I knew I had to get out of there.
Coming into tonight, I knew it was going to be a great race, ... In the 400, Laszlo put up a 4:10.1 earlier in the year, and so you expect him to put up a good time in (the 200). I knew Ryan was going to be fast coming off his short course season, and he's improved a lot since Athens, so I just wanted to go out there and relax a bit and go out there and do what I had to do.
From the very beginning, I had a lot of female role models in music. I would go to shows, and there were always women fronting bands and playing guitar or backing up and playing drums or bass in a band. That probably contributed to my belief in myself to go out and perform for people.
I had a lot of friends, family friends, that had season tickets, and we'd all go when we were little kids. And you'd go after you played your own baseball game and change out of your uniform in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium to go put on street clothes and go watch the game.
I've had fans try and jump the guard rail. I've had fans key my car. I've had fans try to stab me.
Having gone through the [Marvel] writer program, I knew Black Panther was in the pipeline and I knew they were big fans of my writing. But I had to compete with the other writers who were put up for it - no one hands out jobs.