What is hardcore? Hardcore is not just being hardcore, hardcore is going in the ring and giving 100% of yourself. Hardcore is great fans.
I'm always interested to watch Chris Leben fight. He just fights from a different place.
We got tables they're going through constantly, chair shots, all this, very dangerous maneuvers where you can possibly break your neck or something like that.
Extreme rules, hardcore wrestling - whatever they want to call it - was born out of a necessity to survive.
Pro wrestling is entertainment, but people get hurt all of the time.
Evan Bourne is just like me. Hopefully, he can pick out his offensive moves, because he's got so many, and he's so incredible to watch. I just hope he takes the advice of all of us who have been around a little bit longer and he can tone it down. That way, he can last a lot longer.
In the '70s and the '80s, what wrestlers were doing back then, yes, they're taking bumps, and they're busting up their bodies and things like that, but now, we got these cages: they're falling off.
You look back at the Attitude Era and the level of entertainment we put in the ring now. The Attitude Era doesn't even come close. I'm not afraid to say that, either.
I got my break in the business with the now-defunct Bill Watts' TWF, the old Mid-South. Which was really, in many ways, the predecessor to ECW in its time, in that age. It was a really cool, high-impact, snug type of product.
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.
Hardcore wrestling like CZW is just nonsense. There's no story there. You've got guys jumping off of houses onto barb wired tables, and that's it. They don't know how to work. CZW is trash.
In ECW, hardcore wrestling wasn't done just for the fun of it. It was done for a purpose, for a reason. And for me, it was done to exist and produce a revenue for my family.
Anyone that's been with WWE, there's frustrations of feeling like you can only do so much. The women are told not to punch or to kick, to do power bombs and the power moves, and none of that exists in 'Lucha Underground.'
I've rung my bells so many times, especially back in the day when chair shots to the head were legal. My goodness, I took so many of those.
I can't tell you how many spot shows little Johnny Nitro, like, pulled the chair out in the arena in Shelbyville Fair and did a moonsault only to get chewed out by Rip Rogers and Jim Cornette about it. I mean, I did years of it.
I don't have a problem with dives out of the ring, but there are a lot of these guys who don't have anything to fall back on, and they're not making any money doing it. A lot of these guys go out there, and they're gonna break their necks at 23 years old doing things they shouldn't be doing.
'Lucha Underground' is the evolution of wrestling. It's high-style, high-flying, fast-paced hybrid style wrestling, and we're actually paying homage to lucha libre for the first time.
The more exciting, flying wrestlers are not going to be your 300-pound wrestlers.
I can speak for myself personally, I loved ECW. I loved everything about it. I loved the crew, I loved the fans, the style, working there.
I remember when we were having cage matches and Superfly Snuka was the first to do this - both of us were doing dives off the top rope - but at MSG he did off the top of the cage onto Don Muraco.
Mick Foley - the match we had at Backlash is one of my two or three favorite matches ever. Much props to him: he puts his body on the line, and what he did for me that day, I'll never forget.
I don't think there is anybody, including Jeff Hardy, who puts their body through as much abuse as A. J. Styles.
I felt like I evolved into a great singles wrestler in ECW because of the opportunities to speak and wrestle longer matches.
I think my style of game is aggressive.
