Quotes About Transition

While wrestling in college as a junior, it came to a point where wrestling just wasn't enough for me anymore. I love wrestling, but I felt like I was missing something, and so the striking part about MMA, the boxing and kickboxing, was what got me really interested in MMA.

Seth Rollins was just leaving Ring Of Honor when I was coming in, so I've heard him say very nice things about me in interviews and stuff. I always say nice things about him because of that respect I have for him. I watched him when I was working the independents while he was wrestling at Ring Of Honor, and I used to be blown away by his work then.

Going from The Shield to singles competition, it wasn't a really big transition for me. Before we were The Shield, we were all singles wrestlers. And we were wrestling a bunch of guys all the time down in developmental.

Since I left the wrestling business and got in the Jim Cornette business, my blood pressure is down considerably.

I think seeing me cross over to pro wrestling and having fun - I get up in the morning, and I'm not a morning person. My alarm goes off, and I'm back out and training again.

It took me a few years to explain to my colleagues and my mentors and the people that I looked up to and I wrestled that I'm not in wrestling anymore. I'm in sports entertainment. Pro' wrestling doesn't mean that we're saying we're a step up above amateur wrestling, because there's nothing above Olympic wrestling.

I became a wrestling fan in college. So, I was more of a wrestling fan as an adult than when I was a little kid.

In the future, I'd like to break more into acting and stuff. I think that pro wrestling is a great springboard, really. You see a lot of guys coming from that world. In a lot of ways, it's like live theater. Guys going out there and performing and having to act on the fly and be their own stuntmen at the same time.

It is not easy to go away and come back. One year out of MMA is like five years out of MMA. When you leave and go do something else, like pro wrestling, you're so far behind the times.

I don't know which one is harder - going from MMA to wrestling or from wrestling to MMA.

I quit doing the movies because the wrestling was going so good and was so on fire during the '80s and '90s, but I was getting all these movie scripts.

Believe it or not, I kind of went into professional wrestling so I could get an avenue into acting.

I think the self is complicated, that at various times we are all various people, and wrestling actually does a lot with that. You have things like heel turns where a person goes from being a good guy to a bad guy.

I lost in the 1988 Olympics, and I was pretty depressed for about eight years. I quit wrestling, and I got into Brazilian jujitsu in 1991.

There's no question, I guarantee you, that you will see more NFL players getting into wrestling. They have the personality for it.

I wanted to be a baseball player, but I became fascinated with wrestling as a teenager.

My exit strategy from pro wrestling wasn't carved in stone. I retired because of a few neck issues, some neurological issues.

The blessings wrestling has given me have allowed me to find some new passions, but it's really hard when you've got that first love, and nothing really replaces it.

I'm not wrestling anymore. I'm out of that part of my career.

I don't know if a pro wrestling career prepares you for Hollywood. When you get out there, and you're in an arena for 20,000 people or 90,000 people, it's a lot different than being on a quiet set with 100 people, so I think you get used to dealing with cameras.

I'm not addicted to wrestling anymore. For a long time, I was.

I'm having a really hard time with this retirement thing and not having wrestling.

I come from a wrestling background but don't really use it in most of my fights.

I guess you could say I fell into it. The main goal was to be successful and to make my family proud. Back then, MMA was just getting started, and there didn't seem to be a ton of rules. It seemed pretty brutal, and I was still pretty focused on wrestling. But I decided to give it a shot.