People try and make it a big deal, but a show's a show, work's work, if you haven't wrestled in New York in a couple months, it's always good to take a booking there because there's a lot of great wrestling fans up there.
Evan Bourne is a ship that has sailed but if he wound up back at WWE, I'm imagine I'd run back to that name because of copyright ownership stuff.
My first venture to Qatar was with WWE. It was an incredible tour and we stayed at a luxurious hotel. I ventured out by myself and wandered down to a shopping center and there was beautiful architecture everywhere.
I remember when I had just left WWE and I was wrestling in England and Germany, I could just tell that this influx of this new wave of wrestling was coming much like it felt when I began wrestling back in '99.
I don't wanna say I'm anti-military as my mission is the exact opposite and I'm a unifying force. I'm there to show everybody that we're all the exact same.
When I began in Ring of Honor, I was very fortunate to get on shows and get looked at and get the experience. I was working with a ton of guys who had more experience than me at the time, like AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels.
So I always respected the guys who were trying to do it on their own without taking a handout from a big organization. They were trying to create their own thing, the DIY style, which is sort of always been my style, kind of a makeshift survival mode and really just kind of forging your own path.
For me, as much fun as it is to watch wrestling is, actually wrestling is what struck a chord with me.
I use the right hemisphere of my brain and what I have is this advantage that makes me exceedingly interesting in pro wrestling.
Let's face it: when we were crazy into wrestling, there were 20 million people on Monday nights watching wrestling. So what you have are 17 million lagged wrestling fans. People who connect to it somewhere, but haven't really found an inspiration or a cultural connection to it.
So, there's plenty of good heels in the business. I don't see guys who can get fans to rally behind them like I do. It's hard. It's the hardest job in the business and I'm doing it every single night.
I mean I imagine I could have done a better job with keeping my paperwork and paying my taxes. For the most part, everything happened exactly the way it should.
I wouldn't want to go see a comedian if he was using the same jokes. So I'm not going out there trying to do the same thing that and my body's changed, my life's changed and really if people have already seen me do something a 1,000 times, 1,001 is not going to impress anybody.
But I really think wrestling with pure intentions just wrestling to be a better wrestler, eventually you will get there when the time is right.
The thing I noticed most from challenging from country to country is not the differences but the similarities. Wrestling fans are all the same.
That is why I can never walk away from wrestling because there's this moment - the bell rings and everything slips away. The path, the future. There's nothing but that moment right in front of you where the intensity is high, the risk and reward are high, and you have to enter into a mental state that doesn't allow for hesitation.