Wrestler

For me, my number one guy would be Tanahashi from New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Like, watching him, like, this guy is a bonafide rockstar over in Japan. He can't even walk down the street without getting stopped, the way that he carries himself.

If you sit around and wait for things to happen, they're not going to happen the way you want.

I'm going to be with Ring of Honor for a while. So I'm focused on making ROH the best company it can be.

When I was first started, when I was eighteen, I wrestled for a company that had a very hardcore fanbase and demanded a lot from its wrestlers. So, every single match, I would do every move possible. I would land on the concrete floor; I would land really high on my head just to try to impress the fans.

Wrestling is not only my job, it's my life, so when I wasn't able to wrestle, I didn't know what to do with myself.

Wrestling in the Midwest is always such a blast, and a favorite place of mine.

I started training when I was a senior in high school. I trained at the Combat Zone Wrestling Academy in South Philadelphia.

I got signed to Ring Of Honor because Jim Cornette happened to be paying attention to something I was doing.

Like me personally, I'm not a huge football guy, but I do watch the Super Bowl every year, and I get into it because it's exciting.

Wrestling has gotten crazy lately in that guys can really make comfortable, good livings outside of WWE.

The Internet, as a platform, I think is really fantastic.

I think that battle that you have almost never goes away. You're always questioning and hoping that stuff goes a certain way, that you get a certain reaction.

It's a really cool time to be a wrestling fan.

Ring of Honor always has a great general idea of what they think I need, and generally, we agree pretty quickly on what I want to do.

I've been over to Japan a handful of times, and the fans there are some of the best. So supportive, so appreciative, genuinely excited to meet the wrestlers they watch.

When you're an independent wrestler, committing a lot of time and effort into honing your craft as much as possible in as many different places as possible will catch the WWE's interest as far as the independent level goes.

Any time guys move to 'Raw' and 'SmackDown,' I think that is what has kept NXT so relevant and has kept the fans so invested because they are now conditioned that whoever leaves or comes in, NXT, as a product, is going to give really exciting sports entertainment every time.

For me, I've been very lucky because of my relationship with Ring of Honor. I'm very close with everyone there, and that includes the guys that negotiate the contracts.

For me, it's always been a financial kind of scenario. I was actually the first one who signed the 'exclusive to Ring of Honor' contract. I was the first guy who ever signed one of those contracts. That was tough for me because I had no one to talk to. I had no examples to go on. I was the guinea pig.

There are some times I'm really busy and other times I'm not, but I prefer to be really busy because I generally don't know what to do with myself when I'm not wrestling or on the road.