What surprised you most about your transition from amateur to pro wrestling?
You would think being an amateur wrestler would help you in pro wrestling but it was the complete opposite. It was a big surprise when I tried out for WWE and found it was more about acrobatics: learning how to bump, learning how to sell, learning the psychology of wrestling, knowing that you need to take your time. You don’t go by instinct, you go by what the story entails. You tell a story in the match in pro wrestling.
In amateur wrestling you just go in there and do what you’ve trained your whole life to do, which is just attack and do what you have to do to win. I wasn’t used to the showmanship, showing charisma. [In amateur] I was just focused on my opponent and not the crowd. I was focused on winning and that was it. I didn’t think, I went by instinct. When you get in pro wrestling you have to think all the time.
The hard part about adjusting to the pro wrestling wasn’t just telling a story, but letting an opponent… giving that trust in him to throw you around and basically kick your ass and know that he was going to do it safely and you were going to land safely and bump safely. That was the hard part for me, to give my body to someone else, which I never did when I was an Olympic wrestler. It was hard to just turn that off and let somebody else do that to me.
At Backlash 2001 you had an unusual match with Chris Benoit: a 30 minute Iron-Man like match where only submissions counted. How did you go about making that type of match work for the audience?
I was relatively new and Chris was a hell of a wrestler. He was in the peak of his career and I was just starting. But I have a knack for knowing how to put myself into a situation and get out of a situation. In other words, I pretty much took control of that match because I knew the technique of an amateur wrestling match which would entail trading off moves and submissions. It was easier for me to lead that match and have Chris — who was an incredible wrestler — follow and do an incredible job. If you watch that match, almost 95% of that I initiated first and when I did something, I left an opening for Chris to counter back
Chris Benoit was a prime example of what a pro wrestler should be in the ring. He knew it all and I had great chemistry with him because we were both very similar, very aggressive, very technical. It was always fun wrestling him — it was hard work, but fun. It was a good challenge. We had some incredible matches, in particular the Royal Rumble 2003 for the title. We had so many submission tradeoffs. When I wrestled Chris Benoit, it was what wrestling should be. It was all wrestling, very little striking, no acrobatics, it was pure wrestling in the middle of the ring and, man, that doesn’t come by very often.
How long did it take for you to feel comfortable in leading a match?
I started in late 99 and I was a great follower. I had great talent [to lead me]: I started out with the Jerichos and Benoits, went to the Undertakers, the Rocks, the Triple Hs, the Stone Colds. I pretty much kept my mouth shut for at least a year and a half! But keeping my mouth shut and listening and following and learning, when you’re a great follower, you then can become a great leader. And so within my second year I was leading my matches. I didn’t plan for it to be that quick. I would sculpture my matches; I felt I had the ability to do that, to make it exciting.
By two years in I was able to become a great leader and become a great producer of matches where you structure it the way you want to be. I’m always open to ideas, but [now] all of my matches, most of the match is my ideas. I’ve been very blessed with the talent to do that, so I feel comfortable doing that and it seems like most of the talent I wrestle feels comfortable with me doing that. But I always want to hear their input as well because two heads are better than one when you’re structuring a match.
Now you’re in the veteran role, who’s a good example of somebody who’s been able to learn from you?
Magnus is one of them, he’s taken to it very quickly. I really like the way he’s progressed. EC3 is another great talent. He’s very entertaining. He’s good in the ring, very good in the ring. Is he the best? No, but he’s solid. He’s very solid in the ring. Watching Spud, he’s a great talent. For a little guy he’s incredible; it was a lot of fun wrestling him. One of them that I really, really like is Kenny King: I think he’s the most underrated talent on the roster. That kid can have an incredible match with anybody and it’s fun to watch him work.
There’s now a lot of guys, including yourself, on the TNA roster who worked for WWE in some capacity and it didn’t work out. How much of an incentive does that create to “prove them wrong”?
I think it’s a great challenge. I don’t think these guys look at [TNA] as a demotion, I think they look at it as an opportunity to be on worldwide TV. They know that TNA has incredible talent. I knew that: it’s part of the reason I went to TNA. I saw AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Sting and I was licking my chops thinking “Gosh, will I ever wrestle these guys.” They’re a lot of the reason I went down here. A wrestler like Drew Galloway, another great talent that came from WWE. He came in and had a great positive attitude and was very grateful for the opportunity. I think these guys step up and they realise this isn’t the end of their career, it’s just the beginning.
You’ve done some MMA training where amateur wrestling is clearly valuable. Did your pro wrestling help in any way?
Being a pro wrestler, you spend a lot of time on your back. I think that helped me when I started training MMA because I felt rather comfortable being on my back and learning a lot more jiu-jitsu skills. If I came out of the Olympics I wouldn’t have felt very comfortable being in that position. I think pro wrestling gave me the opportunity to be in that spot and learn how to work from that position. I did enjoy the training.
Several guys have worked for TNA while having an MMA career. With your experience, do you think it’s really possible to do both successfully at once?
I think Bobby Lashley’s a prime example of somebody that can do it, and do very well at both. Is it a possibility? Yes, but I think your schedule in pro wrestling has to be rather limited. I know Bobby spends about ten percent of his time in pro wrestling and 90 percent of the time training for MMA. I think it would be rather difficult if you have a full-time pro wrestling schedule; I don’t think it would be possible. I know that for sure. I tried and there was no way of getting around it. I got injured rather quickly and there just wasn’t enough time to train MMA. Training MMA is a full-time schedule just like when I trained for the Olympics. It’s 8-10 hours a day and you have to put in the time to get the results. If you’re a pro wrestler and you wrestle full time, there’s no chance of you doing MMA.
You’re already promoting next year’s UK tour. With the growing use of UK talent, do you think there’s scope for some sort of TNA satellite promotion here that could develop British talent while giving some of the TNA roster extra dates?
I believe so, I think that’s in the plans for TNA. It is our best crowd, we do pretty well ratings-wise for our TV in the UK. I know that we are continuing looking for more British wrestlers: that’s why we have the [British Bootcamp] competition every year. And we also are aware that the indy shows in the UK are becoming more popular. So there is a lot of talent to choose from. When that’s one of your top countries — literally right now it’s the only country that we go to outside the US to do TVs — we are looking for more British talent. It can only help us.
TNA has largely become a TV-focused product in recent years, rather than running regular house shows and live pay-per-views. How has that change affected you as a wrestler?
I like it for many reasons, and some reasons I don’t like it. It’s nice to have six weeks off in between each set of tapings, but the hard part is when you are working the tapings, let’s say you’re going to do eight TVs in four days, you have the possibility of wrestling eight times in four days. That’s rough. That can bang you up worse than doing once a week, every week.
So, there are some pros and there are some cons. This last taping I think I wrestled seven times in four days and I got banged up pretty badly. Not to the point where I couldn’t wrestle, but I was really sore and I had some situations with being overworked; it’s tough.
But that’s where we are right now and I know as the world heavyweight champion I have to continue to defend the title as many times as I can, so as long as I’m champion and I want to be champion, I feel obligated to do that [schedule] and I’m OK with it. But at the same time I’m 46 years old and [when] you do that many matches in a short period of time, it can take a toll on your body.
You’ve now been in TNA for longer than you were in WWE. Was that something you ever expected when you made the switch?
No, I did not. I planned on maybe wrestling five years in TNA and possible retiring. I’m actually heading into my ninth year in TNA, but when a company takes care of you and they treat you as a priority and they’ve never done me wrong, they’ve always done right by me. Even when I needed time off or I had some personal problems, they were always there to support me and when that occurs, you learn that the people who are treating you well, you need to treat them well back and that’s why I continue to keep wrestling. TNA needed me and I wanted to show my loyalty to them.
Coming out of the Olympics you tried working as a sportscaster but struggled in the role. Now you’ve got so many years’ experience of talking on camera from wrestling, is that something you’d consider returning to in the future?
It was tough. I worked for Fox Sports in Pittsburgh and I didn’t really rehearse and I got thrown right into the fire and I had to learn. I was a sports anchor, that’s rather tough. I learned rather quickly. Was I a great sportscaster? No, but was I good enough? Yeah. It took some time though, it took three or four months for me to kind of get the hang of it, and I was there for a year. It just wasn’t for me.
I’m not a — this is a difficult thing for me to say, but all my life I’ve trained on my time, on my schedule. Whether it was 8, 10, 12 hours a day, it was on my time and I did it when I wanted to do it. I’m not a nine-to-fiver. I can’t go in every day and work eight to ten hours at the will of what they want me to do: I like having my own set schedule and doing what I like to do. So sportscasting, it really isn’t for me.
If you could relieve the experience of any one match from your career, which would it be?
I had such a blessed career. For the 15 years I’ve been in the business I’ve probably been able to put on more consistent five star matches than anyone else. I would say my match at Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania due to the pure fact that my neck was broken. The match was incredible but I believe it could have been better if I was healthy. We had to hold back a little bit and make sure I didn’t get too banged up: my neck was already pretty bad and I couldn’t use my left arm much. So that match, being in the main event at WrestleMania, that’s a match I would have liked to do over again.
