There's probably a hundred more submission holds in the WWE because of me training to bring in those submissions so people could look at them a legitimize them for pro wrestling. You look at it before I was there and after I was there: it's different matches.
Excitement was there because I had the realisation of having matches that weren't always TV matches, that weren't always strict on timelines or storylines and more so focused on the wrestling, different opponents I hadn't worked before and a lot of one-on-one matches.
When I was with WWE before, I was a big guy throwing people around - power moves. Then after that, when I left WWE, I was like, 'I still enjoy professional wrestling,' but some of the smaller guys look up at me and say, 'I don't wanna wrestle him. I don't wanna get thrown around by that guy.'
There are people that bring artists to me to look at it and it's a question of whether I like their music and their look and if I think there's something they have that makes them different and commercial.
I trained at All Pro Wrestling in the U.S. Later, I signed up with the New Japan Pro Wrestling. Then WWE noticed me.
Ordinary people need to lead and not sit there and think that governments are going to spoon-feed them and look after them and look after the country, because they won't.
For me to be the first African-born WWE Champion is incredible because now, people who look like myself can look at TV and see on WWE television that anything is possible because I'm doing it.
Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them.
You know, differentiating between training and matches. If they are all matches it becomes very natural to shoot them, although Dan thinks I should shoot more of them. I think I shoot plenty of them.
I don't know how I could have been more explicit. I gave them a roadmap and a flashlight, but they didn't go where I told them to go, they didn't look where I told them to look, they didn't tell the people I told them to call.
My strength is my wrestling, but I don't focus on it as much. I try to focus on a lot of different things like knees, elbows, submissions, and submission defense - just a lot of different things.
What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.
Make sure you look after people around you and it holds you in good stead going forward in terms of leadership. Look at all the best leaders and they have those qualities.
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.
Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.
I look after those who look after me." He smacks his lips, stares at me, and adds, "I also look after those who don't." - Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)
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.