AEW star Kyle O’Reilly was the latest guest on Renee Paquette’s The Sessions, where O’Reilly discussed the “underlying problem” he sees in NXT, and how that influenced him to jump ship over to AEW. Highlights from the interview are below.
How the NXT locker room began to get decimated by releases and call-ups:
“The AEW locker room is full of the guys that I came up with in this business that I’ve been friends with for years. There was a lot of that in NXT too, but it seemed like every couple weeks I would look around at the locker room and it was getting decimated. It wasn’t a very good environment, I guess, at that time. I wanted to follow my heart where I’m going to be happy and be utilized.”
How he felt that if WWE didn’t have a spot for him on the main roster after 4-plus years it was time for him to move on:
“I felt to stay with WWE, it was going to be to stay with NXT, and at this point after four and a half years, if you don’t really have a spot with Kyle O’Reilly on the main roster, I got the vibe that there wasn’t going to be a spot for me up there.”
Says there are a lot of people in NXT who don’t love wrestling:
“I think people in wrestling are really rare in the sense that you really, really have to love it,” Kyle shared. “I think that might be an underlying problem in this new NXT. There’s a lot of people coming in that I don’t think really have that true love for it. I’m sure they’ll do well, they’ll make a big splash, be a big star, and make a ton of money, but at the end of the day, if your heart isn’t really in it, I don’t know. It’s tough.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)