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.
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.
People don't understand, and I do, is what happens after wrestling. What do you do when people stop chanting your name? For me, I already had that with the nightclub business before wrestling and now with DDP YOGA.
Give me a sport that is greater than wrestling, that's more dominant than wrestling and with more champions in fighting than with wrestling. There isn't. The sport that's king is wrestling.
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.
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.
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.
After watching wrestling for 20 years, I thought I had enough confidence to do it. There were no wrestling schools at the time.
After intensive body building for eight years, I went to the U.S. for training. There, I learnt the art of wrestling. Later, I went to Japan and joined a wrestling group.
I've been wrestling since I was 18 years old. And within the first five months of my wrestling career, I'd already had three concussions. And for years after that, I would get a concussion here and there, and it gets to the point that when you've been wrestling for 16 years, that adds up to a lot of concussions.
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!
Professional wrestling has moved so far to the athleticism side and people are overly indulging in the stunt monkeys, but that's why there are so many injuries all the time. You need to break open your soul, break open your mind, and remember that pro wrestling is magic.
I've been wrestling since I was 4 years old, so I have over 30 years in some form of wrestling, non-stop in my life. For me, it's who I am.