Mustafa Ali's one of my buddies man, and every so often, he would get home. He would invite me over. We know a couple of people around town.
Especially being in a tag team, you're not always in the same place together and you're not always on the same age together.
I remember talking to Xavier Woods about so many things and vignettes and backstages and these stories we could do between our crazy weird characters and their insane, obviously fun loving characters and all this stuff.
My mother-in-law Vickie is an amazing person and has been nothing but helpful and supportive. She helps with the little things, dealing with being on the road and being away from home and how to keep up communication and little things like where the best hotels are, how to find a gym, little things on the road.
Prior to getting signed, I did a handful of like, small independent events around the area. I did a pre-show kind of match in exchange for helping set up the ring, setting up chairs and stuff like that.
Obviously, just from being an athlete, from being a wrestler keeping in shape just in general is something that stayed with me even being out of the ring for a while, but then eventually been lucky enough to be here in Chicago.
I do get a kick out of the fact that this 'Wrestling With Whiskey' thing has become known enough both amongst whiskey fans, but also amongst the wrestling fans that when something like that pops up then that's kind of the immediate reaction so I get a kick out of that.
So I'll be honest, after the whole Rusev Day thing ended with more of a whimper than a bang, it was a little disheartening.
Even though I'm still doing the singing entrances, with promos and backstages, I was being me as a performer.
I got my Wrestling With Whiskey kind of side passion project and I'm kind of turning into more content and stuff like that... You know just exploring everything in front of me and just trying to spread my grass.
Obviously, anytime you have family or friends or anybody who has been in the business you're in or been down the path, it's an invaluable asset, an invaluable centre for advice.
I would always see my dad who was a big scotch drinker just enjoying his scotch with one ice cube or neat.
I just kept throwing out two or three major ideas, and then that was pretty much right when Tom Phillips came to me asking about the commentary idea and I ended up jumping into that, went down a rabbit hole I never expected.
We are in the age, obviously, of digital content, of the internet content. The one thing that I think this pandemic is going to do is going to explode this kind of digital content.
It's the immature mind that worries about what could be, and it's the mature mind that worries about what is.
I'm just a fan, man. The best word I can come up with is an enthusiast. I'm a whiskey enthusiast. It really kind of snuck up on me.