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.
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.
When I was in seventh grade, I was a scrawny boy with no muscles, so I went out for wrestling. My intention was to develop secret wrestling skills so that if I were jumped by a bully, I'd shout, 'Ha!' and he'd be on the ground in a headlock.
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.
When I first got into wrestling as a kid, I would read all of the wrestling magazines I could get my hands on. There was a satisfaction discovering that there was a whole wrestling world that existed that you didn't see on TV on Saturday morning. There was this idea that there was this stuff going on there that they didn't want us to see.
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.
My foray into the wrestling world is well documented in that I have stated many a time that I am not the kid that grows up and aspires to put wrestling trunks and wrestling boots on and get in the ring and flies around to entertain people.
I was just lucky to be there ahead of the curve to be the driving force behind bringing this amazing style of wrestling from Japan that combined Lucha Libre, American professional wrestling, Canadian professional wrestling and Japanese wrestling all into one beautiful mix that fans worldwide absolutely can't get enough of.
I used to be weak - as did all British fighters - with wrestling, because we don't have high school wrestling or college wrestling here.
I see it as my responsibility to start trying to help wrestling because if I don't do something, wrestling is going to die - like, wrestling as we know it.
In college wrestling, you see a lot of talented athletes come in and fail because Division I class wrestling is the pinnacle of wrestling in America.
I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.
After watching wrestling for 20 years, I thought I had enough confidence to do it. There were no wrestling schools at the time.
Let's face it: when we were crazy into wrestling, there were 20 million people on Monday nights watching wrestling. So what you have are 17 million lagged wrestling fans. People who connect to it somewhere, but haven't really found an inspiration or a cultural connection to it.
I wasn't a wrestling fan growing up; I knew who Hulk Hogan was and stuff but I didn't watch it. I started watching wrestling about three years before I got involved with WCW.
Anytime anyone complains about wrestling, it's so annoying to me because people come off as these entitled infants. Because in reality, wrestling hurts so bad. And then we're hurting ourselves to entertain the masses.