AEW star Eddie Kingston was a recent guest on Busted Open Radio where the Mad King talked about his daily battle with depression, and how he manages to continue living his life as a pro-wrestler despite a constant battle with his demons. Highlights from the interview are below.
On his daily battle with depression:
“There’s a lot of things I have to fight through to get to this point. It’s not just the physical aspect. Why, because my belly sticks out more than the next man? My fault. I like Five Guys. I like ice cream. My bad. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t wake up every morning and I have to deal with my depression before I even get out of bed. Then when I finally get past the depression, then I have to hurry up and get to the gym. Then I have to hurry up and get to Muay Thai Training. Then I have to hurry up and go to grappling training. Then I have to hurry up and get home, fight my depression again because you know something may pop in my head. Every day is a struggle. I like struggle. I like it. Without struggle, there’s no progress. Edgar Allen Poe said it best. He said ‘The sufferers are to be blessed’, so I feel blessed.”
How hard he works everyday to get past his demons:
“I work hard every day just to get past my own demons and depression. I have a lot of guilt for things I’ve done in my past. I have to deal with a lot of regret and a lot of karma that’s coming my way. So when people tell me about hard work, and they just talk about the physical aspect of it, that makes me laugh. I’ve always had a belly. Sometimes it’s been bigger than other times. It depends what I eat that week, but I still get up, and I still fight mental health, and then I fight the physical, and then I go back to fighting the mental again. To be honest with you, there’s days I wake up and I go, ‘You know what? Today’s the day I’m going to throw it all away and just punch a certain person in the face.’ I have that selfishness in me where I say, ‘If I have to feel this pain, everyone has to feel it’, but then I have to fight that. People don’t know that. The people who do understand what I’m saying, I hope they watch, I hope they follow, and understand that you can fight past that.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)
