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.
No one ever achieved a goal by being interested in its achievement. One must be committed. In fact, in studying the source of people's success, I've found that persistence overshadows even talent as the most valued and effective resource in creating and shaping the quality of life. Most people give up a maddening five feet from their goal!
In terms of working out, I'm in the gym, maximum, twice a week, but for a pretty intense period of time: two or two and a half hours nonstop. Most of the exercises are body weight. We're talking pull-ups, chin-ups, decline rows, elevated push-ups.
I would say we had two goals when doing this CD. The first goal is to introduce people who have never seen the show before to the best comics that are on the show. And goal number two is to introduce people that they never heard of before and give you a bit more flavor of what the show is actually like. And those goals are very much in line with the philosophy of the show from the very beginning. It's the very best people who are out there.
My main goal in Impact Wrestling is to win the Knockouts Championship.
If I'm going to be working out two hours a day, I may as well have a goal... and I'm pretty competitive by nature. A triathlon is a new fun thing.
I guess you could say I fell into it. The main goal was to be successful and to make my family proud. Back then, MMA was just getting started, and there didn't seem to be a ton of rules. It seemed pretty brutal, and I was still pretty focused on wrestling. But I decided to give it a shot.
The Greeks understood that mind and body must develop in harmonious proportions to produce a creative intelligence. And so did the most brilliant intelligence of our earliest days - Thomas Jefferson - when he said, not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise. If the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was Secretary of State, and twice President, could give it two hours, our children can give it ten or fifteen minutes.
Matt Hardy may be dysfunctional, but you can't spell dysfunctional without fun. My goal in the professional wrestling industry is to put fun into the dysfunctionality of it.
My goal in wrestling was always to take people on a journey to get a reaction and make people feel like they had seen something special. Thankfully, I get reminded of that every day.
Probably the biggest-kept secret about 'Ring of Honor' is that when you go to see a live show - I've had people in their 60s from down in North Carolina that have seen a lot of wrestling tell me that it was the greatest live wrestling show they've ever been to. The atmosphere is off the charts.
When I started wrestling, WWE was a light at the end of the tunnel that no-one thought they could ever get to. Especially being British, only one or two people ever got there.
My main goal is to try to make fun for everyone. And to see my fans responding to it and to see them having fun is really rewarding.
Give me a few hours, and I can teach anyone how to get in and out on a Hobie. To get to the top level of competition, however, takes years. On a 16- or 18-footer, the total weight between the two people should range from 275-295, and you've gotta be a reasonably coordinated person to be any good at it.
No matter what, I'm trying to have fun and, depending on the mood, fun can be on a roller coaster and playing onstage, or fun can be sitting in a room with three of your best friends talking for two hours.
Obviously, wrestling is a lot of fun, and I love it. But on the mic is where I have the most fun.