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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self.
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.
Wrestling is a team sport, and an individual sport all rolled into one.
I'm good at professional wrestling, and I always will be good, but what's always been different about me is that I can't completely focus on professional wrestling.
The most important thing about being in wrestling is that you have to connect with the crowd, connect with the fans, and you either want them to love you, or to hate you. Either way, so long as they're reacting to what you're doing.
I'm the man that made wrestling famous.
Being a pro wrestler can be kind of difficult sometimes. We have a perception about what we do - and I totally understand the perception, because we're a weekly episodic program, and we're having fun all the time, so people think that's kind of the most talented thing I could do.
Wrestling is like any form of drama or pretty much any form of entertainment - some people understand this about forms of entertainment really intuitively when they're younger, and others would have to be really not very intelligent for a long time until we realize that every human mood is an art.
When you become a professional wrestler, your name becomes company property.
People look at me, and they have a certain perception, and they slap a label on me. The guy you saw in a wrestling ring is not who I am.