Q) Who would you like to face right now in NXT if you had an opportunity to wrestle anybody?
A) You know what, Nakamura is ready. He’s ready for the big time. He is one that I feel like would be interesting to challenge, and I think that our fans would like to see a Mark Henry put him through the paces.
Q) Speaking of Japan, do you think we would see a Japanese WWE Champion one day?
A) Most definitely. I think we just talked about Nakamura. He’s an unbelievably talented guy. He is such a different character that people want to see him more, and I think that he is not the only Japanese wrestler that can be that. It’s just a matter of more Japanese wrestlers coming to America and conditioning the world to see the talent.
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Q) You’ve been with WWE for a long time. Would you compare your first WrestleMania to WrestleMania now, has it grown so much?
A) You know what, WrestleMania was WrestleMania from the first one. Second one was just as good. Then third, the fourth, fifth and here we are now thirty-three years later, and they have stayed in the same stratosphere.
It’s not like one WrestleMania is bigger than the other one. They are all really, really big. The arenas might be smaller or bigger but that doesn’t make WrestleMania – the size of the arena does not make WrestleMania bigger.
It’s the intensity itself. To be in it means that you made it. You arrived. You are one of the best wrestlers in town, on earth and it’s an honour to be a part of that. And many wrestlers like AJ Styles, he wrestled for 20 years, and his whole career was a success, but he didn’t feel like his career was validated until he went to WrestleMania.
Q) Do you get to be involved in the process when it comes to picking things like the theme music or perhaps who is involved in the recording or is it something just the creative team comes to you and says, ‘Hey this is your theme song.’ What’s the process around that?
A) You do have a creative process. You know, I spoke to the guys, and I told them the story about how I became me. As a young man, a strong man, a powerlifter, weightlifter, high school stuff and college stuff, from the Olympics, and how I felt about people trying me when I came into wrestling.
People said, ‘He’s not a fighter, he’s never fought, anybody.’ I’ve fought a lot. It’s just that you never saw it on TV. I grew up in an environment where you had to fight to survive, and that’s what my song talks about.
My song talks about my journey from lifting to being in an environment where I have to survive and ‘Somebody’s going to get it.’ When I told Jay that every time I go to the ring somebody is gonna get their wig split, and he put that into the song. So it was like I had influence just by interacting and talking with writers and producers and rappers
Q) Do you have any outrageous road stories that stand out? I know you used to travel with Owen Hart and he’s got a reputation a certainly one of the biggest practical jokers, it seems. Are there any outrageous stories you’ve got from your time on the road throughout the years?
A) Since you brought up Owen, we would call people in my family and play pranks on them. Before Punk’d, there was Owen Hart. He called my mother and told that he was with the IRS and he was coming to take our house, and it didn’t quite go over there well because I never heard my mother who went to church three days a week, cuss before.
And she cussed Owen out and told him, ‘Come get it, you son of a ...’ I had to sit over there and laugh and realised that I had to stop her before she had a heart attack because she was heated. Owen is still at the top with me.
He was like a brother to me, he taught me a lot, he was always there for me when I needed to know something I had to question, and he never said no.
Q) You have spent a lot of time at the WWE Performance Center working with WWE’s development trainees, what advice would you give to the recently signed Chinese talent that are now working down there so that they could perhaps one day have a successful career like yourself?
A) I watch them work, and I’ve been there. They work as hard as anybody that has ever been there. If they can continue to work at the rate they have been working, and have confidence that who they are on the inside is good enough, then they will be great. And I look forward to seeing what becomes of those talents.
Q) WrestleMania started in 1985, and we’re now up to WrestleMania 33. This is just a sports phenomenon juggernaut. How far do you reckon this thing will go? What is the future of the WWE?
A) The business is growing. But WrestleMania will always be WrestleMania. Monday Night RAW, Smackdown, other PPVs, they can change, but I will always expect WrestleMania to be the biggest spectacle in sports entertainment. I think as a fan, not just as a talent but as a fan, I look forward to seeing WrestleMania happen in the future.
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