If I didn't have the wrestling name that I have, I wouldn't have gotten the financial contract that I got with Strikeforce or the long-term contract or the television contract. That's all because of wrestling.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you become a professional wrestler, your name becomes company property.
I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I signed on to work with a wrestler.
I certainly would have regretted not getting into wrestling. It's been very lucrative for me and I've been fortunate to get into it and make money and not do anything stupid where I invested in something that collapsed.
In my era of wrestling, there were no guaranteed contracts, so it was inherent that you draw the crowd in to make money.
The cutthroat part of it is that professional wrestling has no union. There are a number of people that are taken advantage of on a daily basis.
Without knocking Impact Wrestling, your contribution was largely limited to what you could do in the TV show. WWE is a bigger company with a bigger infrastructure and a lot more ways to make a contribution.
If it took professional wrestling for people to recognize me as a person, then all the other endeavors I embark upon will explain me as a person, define me as a person, but wrestling will not define me.
I owe a lot to my dad, just for having provided the wrestling business for us to get into.
First of all, I was a wrestling fan when I was young. Even when I figured out what wrestling was, I was still a fan.
Everyone wants to call wrestling 'the business.' Why don't you treat it like a business? I don't care if you're running a diner, if you're running a car wash or a wrestling company. It's all business.