In my era of wrestling, there were no guaranteed contracts, so it was inherent that you draw the crowd in to make money.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
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.
As badly as everybody feels like I'm a sellout for one thing or another, I guess, ultimately, when it came to wrestling, I just wanted to wrestle where I want to wrestle. And something had to be bigger and more important than the money, and for me, it was the time inside that ring.
I don't want to be the kind of wrestler that has to do it because he needs the money.
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.
If you go to an ATM for a hundred dollars and it keeps spitting twenties, when would you walk away? When it wasn't spitting twenties no more. As long as you can take the money out, you'd stay there. That's what the wrestling business is like.
These wrestlers aren't organized. They have no union, no pension and no insurance. You meet wrestler after wrestler who sold out Madison Square Garden ten years ago, basically running on fumes today. There's a lot of drama there.
There wasn't much money in this sport when I started, but I didn't get into it because of money. I loved to fight, and I loved MMA.
I can look back now and say, 'Aw, that was a little dumb taking huge bumps onto concrete before a couple of hundred fans,' but if it wasn't for that attitude and that type of work ethic, I never would have gotten to WWE.
Sometimes - and I don't mean it disrespectfully - the easiest people to work in the wrestling business are the people in the locker room.
Regardless of the perception that the talent may have or the Superstars may have, WWE's business model is 'give the fans what they want.'
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