Shinsuke Nakamura is probably one of the best wrestlers I've ever been in the ring with. He's very unorthodox. Everything he does is with knockout power. He's a guy who is very flamboyant, so don't let his Michael Jackson antics fool you. This guy is deadly.
A.J. Styles
I was a 19 year old kid; I was 170 lbs soaking wet. I didn't have an identity. I didn't have a look. I didn't have the proper gear. I was just a young guy trying to be a wrestler. So, to be honest, WWE didn't even give me a second look.
Adam Cole
For anyone watching Ring of Honor out of the gate, they knew when they were watching an ROH event that they were watching a different level of wrestler from what they had seen.
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.
When I was nine years old and dreamed of being a pro wrestler, the thing I was most fascinated by was how much love the wrestlers got.
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.
Without Ring of Honor, I wouldn't be the wrestler I am or have the confidence needed to continue to grow in this ever-challenging sport.
There are good wrestlers, great wrestlers, and special wrestlers.
Part of what I've tried to do since I became 'Hangman' is try to give back to the world because I know I can make people feel a little more uncomfortable than maybe most wrestlers do.
Adam Page
I like to think I've always been a good wrestler.
As a wrestler, sometimes I'm fortunate with some free time.
I always knew that in the U.S., if you wanted to be a wrestler, Ring of Honor was the place to be.
When I was really little, I wanted to be a wrestler so I could be like the girls I looked up to. My brother then told me that 'You don't want to be like your idols; you want to grow up and be better than them.' To this day, that's the best piece of advice I've ever gotten.
AJ Lee
We, as wrestlers, need to remember that this is a business. We started because we love the business, and we stay in it because we have a lot of passion for it, but you have to be rewarded for your work.
Alberto Del Rio
There were many great moments in WWE, but the most special was to win the 'Royal Rumble' of 40 wrestlers.
Pro wrestling has always been my passion. I always wanted to be a pro wrestler.
In Mexico, luchadores, the wrestlers, are the only Mexican superheroes. And to keep the mystery behind the mask is really important.
My first six months were in Japan; then I went to Mexico and then went back to Japan. I had the opportunity to wrestle all the wrestlers from the United States, Europe, and Japan when I was there.
Top of my head is Rey Mysterio Jr. He is one of my best friends, fantastic wrestler, and a real-life legend. He would be the perfect person to do a world tour to say goodbye.
I wanted to be a wrestler since before I can remember.
I learned from many people. I became a better wrestler thanks to my matches with Edge, with Christian, with Rey Mysterio, with John Cena - who, even though you, the fans, want to criticize him, John Cena is one of the best wrestlers of the universe.
I'm one of those wrestlers that leaves everything to the audience and to the fans. I never plan anything, and you will never see Alberto Patron planning in the back what he is going to do in the match.
Just because you have a good athletic background doesn't make you necessarily a good wrestler. Because it takes a lot to be a good professional wrestler.
At 15-years-old, I always wanted to do professional wrestling, and at 15, I started training as a professional wrestler. It was always the plan to become an entertainer, a sports entertainer.
I was a big fan of the more Mexican-based wrestlers when I started watching WCW, and I saw guys like Silver King, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio. And where I come from, we have this European heritage with World of Sport with guys like Johnny Saint, Johnny Kidd, 'Rollerball' Mark Rocco, Robbie Brookside.
Being a wrestler, it can get rough in terms of your mindset, just having that mentality embedded in you where you just wanna go, go, go, 100 miles per hour, always redlining your body and never actually taking the time out to let your body recover the right way. As I got older, I started to realized that less sometimes is more.
I lost as amateur, I lost a bunch of times as a wrestler, and you always come back.
Sonnen doesn't know martial arts. He's a wrestler; he doesn't know how to respect people. Some say he's promoting the fight, but he disrespected my country, my family and fans.
Any wrestler who will piledrive Lawler and injure him like he did me gets five thousand dollars from me!
My whole career, I've been fighting wrestlers. If you look back, all of my fights have been against wrestlers.
I put on 15 kg for my role as an amateur wrestler in the first half of the Marathi film Natrang.' Then, I lost 17 kg for the second half of the film where I play a nachya,' an effeminate character in traditional Marathi tamasha. The weight gain took 40 days and I lost weight in the next 40 odd days.
What the general public doesn't always understand is that wrestlers often only have hours to put things together, not days or weeks, except in certain cases.
It was always important for me not to be pigeonholed as a cruiserweight-style wrestler.
I have friends in other industries but if I am training for a wrestling match, I would turn to the best wrestler to train, not a football player.
I think there's a balance of fan interaction. I think sometimes there can be a little too much interaction. I know when I was a kid, the mystique of wrestlers and stuff was something that was kind of big, and if I got to hang out with them all the time i think that mystique can be lost.
I always mention Bobby Roode. We just click on a lot of different levels. We grew up appreciating the same type of wrestler and same type of wrestling. We are similar students to the game.
Is it supposed to be a championship for a certain style of wrestlers? For wrestlers under a certain weight limit? I think over the years the one thing that has held the X-Division from being in a certain spot is that it doesn't have a definition.
I was in the top 1 percent of football players. Indie guys are in the bottom 95 percent of wrestlers.
Growing up watching WWE, they used to have bra-and-panties matches or pillow fights, and that's why my mom didn't want me to watch wrestling. But when my parents divorced, I was able to watch wrestling again, and that's when I started to really get into wrestlers like Ivory.
When I started this character, it was me being 12 years old again. We would have other wrestlers come to our promos, and I'd geek out over them and show my excitement. I would just grab them and not let go.
For me, the only way I know how to do this is to be myself. I actually learned that from 'The Dream' Dusty Rhodes. I was trying to be this wrestler, and I was trying to be cool, and Dusty literally told me, 'You've got to be yourself.' That's really how Bayley started, and that is what brought me this far.
I remember having the opportunity to meet Ivory, as a kid, and she was the first woman's wrestler that I met. She looked at me and said, 'I'm going to see you in the ring one day, aren't I?'
It's really important: you can be the best wrestler in the world and make the most money, but if you're not a good person in the back, that says a lot about you. I've never wanted to be that person, because I've had so much help along the way, and I want to continue that.
If you can believe it, I had no intentions of being a wrestler.
Everybody that's employed by 'WWE' - the biggest wrestling company in the world - should be good wrestlers able to tell good stories.
I'd read Stone Cold's biography about how he lived on, like, raw potatoes, and I thought, this is all part of it. This is what wrestlers do, and this is what I'm going to do.
In wrestling, if you want to be the best wrestler, you show up at the U.S. Nationals. If you win that, you go to World Team Trials. You make the World Team, you go to the World Championships, and we all know who the best is at the end of the year.
When I was a wrestler, my job was mostly looking mean and throwing punches and kicks.
Being married to a wrestler has its unique challenges, being a wrestler married to a wrestler is next level.
