IMPACT world champion Josh Alexander recently spoke with DAZN about the success he had in 2022, and what he expects for himself in 2023. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
On his successful 2022:
I mean yes, of course and then there’s also the part of ‘no’ (Alexander said in response to if he’s feels he got his credit for 2022). When I look back at the year, I kind of did a recap a few weeks ago over Christmas break, just talking to my wife and I had forgot I wrestled [Tomohiro] Ishii for some reasons. There was matches that I had that were so awesome to me personally and fans received it really well that I had forgot I had because the very next month, I had this match with Eric Young that meant so much to me and I thought was received super well and then you know, I had this match with Alex Shelley. All the matches I had, they meant something to me, everybody regarded them super well. It seemed to get a lot of fanfare and noise for IMPACT Wrestling as well as myself and stuff like that. It’s just a weird place to be in because when I was X Division Champion, I did a lot of this stuff too. Maybe not the most marquee matchups possible but every match, I’d have people (that) were saying the same kind of thing like, you know, ‘You’re stealing the show. You’re putting this stuff on the map, you’re working your ass off’ and I love that, that’s what I wanna do. Bell to bell, that’s where I want you to bet on me every single time and put the pressure on me and then, you know, like last year, the Sports Illustrated top ten came out and they were like, ‘Oh man, you’re number nine on the thing.’ I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool to me,’ it’s cool. But then, my father-in-law reads it and he doesn’t know much about this stuff but he’s like, ‘Sports Illustrated said you’re the ninth best wrestler in the world? That’s amazing’ and to everybody else, it was a Sports Illustrated piece.
What he expects for 2023:
It meant something huge and I was just like, oh cool. I wonder what I’ll do this year because I think this year was way better than last year and I’m not even on these rankings and stuff like that now and I think it’s a testament to there’s so much talent in pro wrestling now and there’s so much wrestling to consume on a weekly basis… The only slight I think is not enough people are giving IMPACT the credit we deserve right now and that’s what the goal is for 2023 is keep this momentum going, keep the growth going, keep doing what we’re doing in 2022 and even do it even better in 2023 so that we get that recognition next year, all of us, not just me.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)