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.
I never trained in pro wrestling with The Sheik, but I did amateur wrestling with pro wrestlers in my dad's basement.
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.
Many people ask me about WWE and if I'd go to WWE in the future. They ask me if I'm going now. I will not go. I want to make New Japan Pro-Wrestling bigger.
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.
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.
Pro wrestling is pro wrestling and it's one of those industries where things change on a dime. I'm coming up on 19 years in a business with various companies and often one day you're there and the next day you're gone.
There was a time that I really loved pro wrestling, but I'm not a pro wrestling junkie, per se.
I loved my time in Deep South Wrestling. We trained so hard and I got a crash course into the world of sports entertainment and pro wrestling.
MMA and the UFC have taken all of the pro wrestling fans because it's pro wrestling from 30 years ago, just in an Octagon and the fights happen to be real. But they're marketed exactly the same way.
I'm going to show you how we do it in New Japan Pro Wrestling. That's what you get whenever I wrestle, whoever's in the ring with me.
When I was growing up, I thought there was only WWE. That's it. One promotion in the world. And then, as I grew up, I found that there's local wrestling. There's WCW, there's ECW. In Mexico, there are the luchadores. And then, finally, I realized there's wrestling in Japan.
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.
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'll be honest, when I first started pro wrestling, everybody else did clotheslines better than me. They did everything about pro wrestling better than me. But when it comes to fighting, getting nitty and gritty, I'm the man.
I'm very aware that pro wrestling fans can be some of the most vocal and passionate and descriptive about how they feel when it comes to pro wrestling. So I'm totally fine with how fans talk about how they feel, cause if they're not allowed to voice how they feel, then what's the point of being a wrestling fan. You gotta know what you like and what you do't like and that's fine.