I love what I'm seeing out there with Pro Wrestling Syndicate, Northeast Wrestling, Big Time Wrestling, and WildKat in New Orleans. There is a lot of good stuff out there.
I feel like I started with wrestling, and a love of pro wrestling, that lead me to MMA and the UFC. And now it's come full circle back to pro wrestling.
The nWo was the greatest time in professional wrestling because we were going into mixed stadiums like the Georgia Dome. That was one of the greatest times in pro wrestling and was the most profitable time in pro wrestling.
You go from Olympic wrestling into pro wrestling, and it's a very difficult transition, but if you make it, you can earn a great living while at the same time giving amateur wrestling a lot of exposure by being on TV every week. Fans know where you came from.
Wrestling can be anything... There's some forms of wrestling that I'm not too big a fan of, but I'm not going to say it's not wrestling because it is wrestling.
Hopefully, when people watch 'Lucha Underground' and WWE, Ring of Honor, New Japan, AAA, and any other promotion out there, they fall in love with pro wrestling. Pro wrestling, as it affects pop culture, is bigger than any one promotion.
A lot of people think that comedy is sort of a cop out to not wrestling seriously, but I actually would argue that comedy is much more difficult than wrestling seriously because you have to be creative in almost everything that you do if you want the comedy to make sense within the realms of pro wrestling.
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.
I trained at All Pro Wrestling in the U.S. Later, I signed up with the New Japan Pro Wrestling. Then WWE noticed me.
It took me a few years to explain to my colleagues and my mentors and the people that I looked up to and I wrestled that I'm not in wrestling anymore. I'm in sports entertainment. Pro' wrestling doesn't mean that we're saying we're a step up above amateur wrestling, because there's nothing above Olympic wrestling.
To a lot of MMA fighters, pro wrestling is a very popular thing and I'm very thankful for them to try and make the transition into professional wrestling. But then they figure out its not as easy as a lot of people think.
There was a time that I really loved pro wrestling, but I'm not a pro wrestling junkie, per se.
Kurt Angle was amazing. He was the person who got me into pro wrestling. He found me when I was at the Olympic training center just wrestling, amateur wrestling.
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the regional scene. I read 'Pro Wrestling Illustrated,' and I watched Portland Wrestling and everything I could.
In my first fight, I acknowledged it. I'm a professional wrestler, this is who I am, who you know me as. But guess what, I've also been wrestling since I was 5 years old - real wrestling - amateur wrestling, Olympic wrestling.
Wrestling has positively impacted my life in many ways, but perhaps the one singular thing that I gained from wrestling that stands out the most is wrestling provided me with the opportunity to learn mental toughness!
I like all kinds of wrestling, I like pro wrestling, so if there's a guy I've been feuding with for over a year, and damn it, the only thing left to do is beat the crap out of each other in a steel cage, then it's time to do it.