I had Roman on the podcast and he actually credited you
>> Sort of very well.
I thought it was awesome.
I texted him right afterwards.
He's amazing, and you're amazing >> Thank you, thank you.
I have my moments [LAUGH] once the caffeine kicks in.
He credited you to sort of changing the groundwork for
what it meant to be a top guy in WWE.
And because of your longevity, and you were a day in, day out,
constantly grinding, and really defined your place in history.
What do you credit that to?
>> That it's not a grind.
This is all [BLEEP].
It's not.
Man, life isn't easy in general.
No matter how fortunate or unfortunate we are, life has its ups and downs.
I play dress up.
>> [LAUGH] >> That's it.
The work I have to do to play dress up is travel a lot.
And I have to give up certain sacrifices of what has been dictated
as a normal life.
But everybody consistently, the question I hear the most is like,
how did you do it all?
How do you continue to do it all?
I only do things that I dig.
And I just really dig WWE, all of it from the second I got here doing an interview
with Fox and then do another thing for backstage and then wanting to meet you in
person and have an interview with you in person and not on the phone.
And then go and sign a bunch of stuff, and then go on to do three Make-a-Wishes.
And then finally at 6 o'clock or 8 o'clock get the piece of business that I'm
supposed to do, and by 10 o'clock have it.
And my brain isn't exploding because I chose to do all those things.
What people don't understand,
they consistently harp about the schedule of the WWE.
The WWE is more aware of its schedule and asked to the talent than ever before.
And talent can take as much time off as they want., but
there's the intrinsic battle of us of I don't want to lose relevancy.
I would like to make a good living out of this, so it's the push pull.
And my thing is when people get in a place where they complain about the schedule and
the grind, just don't do it.
>> Sure.
>> Just don't do it.
And I really can never remember a distinctive bad day at work.
I can remember tons of bad matches.
I can remember getting booed.
I can remember crickets.
I can remember missing my mark, not telling a good story.
But I honestly cannot remember a bad day at work.
And I think, and that's pushing me forward in film and
in other ventures that I'm doing.
I only will sign up to stuff that I enjoy.
So I have very few bad days at the office.
>> So was the Hollywood thing, was that something you aspired to do for
a long period of time where you just kind of slowly transitioned into it?
>> That would be like a general interviewer saying,
so the wrestling thing, is that something you aspire to do for a long time?
>> [LAUGH] >> No,
none of this, like this is all just bonus.
Somebody was foolish enough to hand me a lottery ticket, and
I was smart enough to take it.
I could never have told you, yeah, you know what I want to be in film,
especially after I tried it early on in my career.
And bombed enough times where literally in 2008 my very close friend Dan Bane,
who was also my agent, I literally looked at him and be like, hey,
man, we're never doing movies again.
And this is my agent, the guy supposed to.
He's like, no, we're not.
We're just gonna have to find other stuff.
>> [LAUGH] >> We're just gonna have to,
we'll do the news.
And that's when we kind of shifted into pivoting into trying to host, and
I discussed what is it that I like becuse this is a time sensitive profession.
So I like a live audience.
I like to be able to entertain.
I like to talk.
So we came up with stuff like that.
And through those opportunities, small parts came up in the movies.
And now after Train Wreck was, I think 2013.
So seven years of trying.
Now some some bigger parts that come in after seven years, right?
And I think that a lot of superstars understand that struggle,
especially superstars who worked in the Independent circuit.
Everybody just sees them show up at NXT and maybe get a wonderful ovation like,
man, you made it.
And everybody's like, yeah, but you don't know about all the other ones.
>> Right, right.
>> When I was driving in my car and splitting trans four ways,
staying in a motel by the hour.
That's a real thing.
So I never thought I would be doing any of this, and
I guess that's also a reason why I don't ever think it's a grind.
Because I never thought I would be doing any of it.
And trust me, it's not like I go through every day being like, this is awesome.
>> [LAUGH] >> I wake up on the wrong side of the bed,
sometimes I'm grumpy, sometimes I'm stern.
Sometimes I'm short.
But I always try to police myself and catch myself and
let everybody know that I just didn't get enough sleep last night.
I'm so sorry.
Because this is a really cool thing, man.
And what you do can literally affect the trajectory of somebody's life.
Austin Theory said in an interview the other day,
John Cena is kinda the reason I got into wrestling.
How cool is that?
>> Right. >> To have somebody say, hey, man,
you were kind of the reason I got in the game.
Wow, that's super special.
Thank you very much.
>> Like what you hear?
Catch full episodes of After the Bell on Apple podcast.
Subscribe now and never miss an episode.