AEW star Eddie Kingston recently spoke with CBS Sports’ Shakiel Mahjouri about his personal mental health battles, which saw the Mad King share some advice for any “tough guys” who feel like they are unable to seek assistance for themselves. Kingston also discusses his support, and the public’s support, and former world champion Jon Moxley after he check himself into an alcohol treatment program. Highlights from the interview are below.
How much the public supported Jon Moxley’s decision to go to rehab:
“It was great. I was going to rally with him anyway. I guess you could say I’m an old-school street guy. My thing was, ‘I don’t care if anyone else understands. I get it. Your wife gets it, I get it. That’s all that matters.’ It does feel nice that everybody else got it. My girlfriend said this to me the other day. She’s the smart one. Toxic masculinity. I never heard of that before. She seems to think that’s dying because we’re actually celebrating men like Moxley who can accept their flaws but also work on them. Back in the day, we used to accept the flaws and move on and not work on them. Now that we accept who we are, we work on them. She says I do the same thing. I don’t know what that means. I still like watching football and eating steak and having a beer here or there.”
Shares his advice to “tough guys” who feel like they can’t address their mental well being:
“I usually like to tell people that we create our own normal. If you sit there and say what you’re going through is not normal, that’s bulls—,” he said. “What you’re going through is what you’re going through. That’s your normal. We make our own. This whole, ‘Don’t talk about things. I gotta be manly.’ I think I’m pretty manly, but I talk about what I go through because I’m trying to see tomorrow. I’m trying to make my mother proud. I’m trying to make my girl proud. I’m trying to make Tony Khan proud. I’m trying to make my boy Monkey [AEW wrestler Ortiz] proud. Homicide. There are so many people that I’m trying to make proud that I have to move on. The best way to move on is to talk about what’s going on. And to make my own normal because no one is going through what I’m going through. I’m the one going through it so it’s my normal. Not that I’m broken, I’m just going to move on from it and move forward because that’s all I can do is move forward. Do I feel a little bit of pressure since that Players’ Tribune? Yeah, but I also kind of like it too because, look, I can move on, I can do it. I’m not the most mentally put-together person but I’m moving forward, I’m trying. So why can’t anybody else?”