“They called me back. I’m not going to name the person’s hand that I shook. They wanted me.
“The problem they found that they had mixed feelings about was that, like I mentioned, I don’t need wrestling. I don’t need to do this. And a lot of people — especially at the tryout — need this. This is how they feed their families. They’ve been doing this forever, and for them to get to this point, they will give any and everything to do it. So they were like, ‘We want you, we want you, we’re going to sign you, but we’re kind of worried about how bad you want this, and we’re not just some reality show... We’re not just glitter and lights and camera.’ I was like, okay.”
“He was like, ‘Also you have a child?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you know, I do’, and they were like, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’, cause at that time my daughter was two... I was like, ‘Well, thankfully, because I have money, we can pay a tutor to help tutor my child, being that we have to relocate to Orlando... I can have a 24-hour nanny, to take care of that as well.
“But they were really grilling me about it, in which I was kind of cut off. I was like, ‘Well, my spouse can travel with me wherever we go. This could be easy for me. I thought about all the precautions to this, like, I’ve been warned about the traveling — I get it.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but this is your family now. I want you to know that.’ I was like, ‘I get it. I totally understand that, but I’ve thought about it, and I want it. I’ve been training for this, this is what I want.’ They’re like, ‘Alright, well, we’ll see.’”
“So they sent the contract, they wanted me to do it. AEW came about, and I came here, I got the experience, and I felt calm. I remember you [Chris Jericho] and I had this conversation in the car. It made me feel at ease about the decision that I wanted to make.”
“I didn’t have to relocate. I felt at home. I could call the owner of our company [Tony Khan] and talk to him — he knew my name. He knew my purpose. He knew that I wanted to do this. And that mattered to me. I wasn’t just a number. I wasn’t just this person, like who was this person? He knew exactly who I was. So that made me feel comfortable. And yes, the other company was pissed off that they sent me this 100 page contract, but I made the best decision for my family, and I made the best decision for myself. I mean look at me — I don’t think I would be anywhere close [to my current position if I was in WWE].”