Pro-wrestling star Chris Hero recently spoke with Inside the Ropes to discuss a variety of topics, including why he has yet to return to the sport, and how CM Punk’s story about him joining The Shield in 2012 had taken on a life of its own. Highlights are below.
Says the story of him joining the Shield has taken on a life of its own:
Okay so, the thing that — a little thing that annoys me about this is people heard the podcast with [CM] Punk and then they put that information out there and it just kind of took a life of its own. When Punk pitched the trio of myself, [Dean] Ambrose and [Seth] Rollins, there was no Shield concept. It was just, ‘Hey, let’s pair these three guys with me.’ So, technically I was never supposed to be a member of The Shield because The Shield didn’t exist when this was pitched, so that’s a thing that I see on Twitter pretty much every other day. It gets a little annoying because it’s deviated so far from the original source of it. I found out just when everybody else found out, by listening to CM Punk on the Art of Wrestling podcast. I never had a conversation with him about this and there are — these things happen all the time where you pitch ideas or you talk about things but the last thing you wanna do is get someone’s hopes up by saying, ‘Hey man, I pitched this,’ or whatever. ‘I’m gonna do my best to get this to work’ and then if it doesn’t work, it’s just unnecessary bad feelings. Not bad, bad feelings but you understand my point. So, listening to that podcast was the first time I had heard that. I never had a conversation with Punk about this, still to this day I have not, because I don’t really know what the point of the conversation would be. People ask me if I think I could have been successful in The Shield and of course my answer is yes, of course I think I can take anything that’s given to me and make the most out of it. Unfortunately, people like to pit this as a me versus Roman Reigns thing which is very silly because he’s an incredible performer, he’s one of a kind, he’s got his own thing figured out and there’s really no reason to compare the two of us, especially when I wasn’t pitched for a Shield because a Shield didn’t exist yet so…
On turning down offers to wrestle because he doesn’t feel right about returning with the state of the world being so uncertain:
Well everything is so uncertain, right? There are a couple companies that are running regularly and then a lot of the smaller companies just either are able to only run under certain restrictions or they’re just not running at all, and I just sort of made a decision when I got let go that I was not going to just jump back into this crazy, uncertain world and cause more chaos to my life, to other people’s lives. I just wanted to kind of sit back and watch things develop and be able to pick and choose where I go and that’s still where I am at this moment. I don’t love the idea of consistent traveling with the climate of things right now, working with people that I do not know very well or do not have a certain relationship with. I want to be very particular about what I do next and that is just hanging out and letting things hopefully improve. I mean we’ve seen a bit of improvement but, it’s still not to the standards that I’m hoping for. So I thought this podcast was a way to get my voice out there and to — just try to, you know, obviously I don’t want people to forget about me, right? But I do think a lot of the thoughts that I have are very relevant toward the current wrestling scene right now and that’s something that I would like to put out there. There’s a lot of tribalism in pro wrestling and pro wrestling fandom these days. It seems like you have to pick one side or the other and whatever side you pick, you’re stuck with for the rest of your life it seems.
Full interview can be found below. (H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)
