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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 think the self is complicated, that at various times we are all various people, and wrestling actually does a lot with that. You have things like heel turns where a person goes from being a good guy to a bad guy.

Pro wrestling is not fake; it's sports entertainment. We go out there and we perform, and a lot of what we do out there is real, but we're not going to insult anyone's intelligence - there is a predetermined winner. It's just the fans don't know who it is, and that's what makes it so intriguing.

It's like fiction - the fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. You go through heavy emotional responses to these stories, and wrestling is a similar thing - but it's happening in real space.

You can't wrestle forever. It's a very physically taxing job. There's no doubt about it. Physically, and more importantly, mentally.

It's kind of beating a dead horse if you're talking about going out and saying wrestling's fake, or this or that. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear, they wanted to find an inside story.

The wrestling world is unique. There are things that happened, and there are things that didn't happen, but in wrestling, you just say they all happened. Some of it's fun to let stay out there - it adds to the mystique and wrestling lore.

I get a lot of influence from pro wrestling. People are like, 'Oh, it's fake.' But it's not about whether the guy wins or loses, it's about how he entertains you the whole time you're watching.

To me, wrestling is therapy. No matter how bad my personal situation is, when I step into the ring, all my troubles disappear. My baggage stays in the back where it belongs.