During his interview with the AEW Unrestricted podcast, rising star Lee Moriarty spoke about what his TAIGASTYLE ring persona is all about, naming Bruce Lee, Wu-Tang Clan, and MF DOOM as loose inspirations. Highlights are below.
Says TAIGASTYLE is a combination of his favorite things that inspired him:
TAIGASTYLE is a combination of all these things that inspired me. I remember when I got into wrestling, I didn’t really have an idea of who I wanted to be. I just wanted to be a wrestler. So for a while, I didn’t have my own unique identity, my own personality I’ve just okay wrestler for being young. I was mentioned earlier, I went to Mexico. Originally, I wanted to be a masked wrestler. I wanted to be a Luchador. My trainers were like, you’re not doing that. You can’t hide your face. So I went to Mexico, I came back, and then I talked to somebody down there about getting masks made and I would wear these masks during my entrances. This was my way of compromising with my trainers.
Credits Wu-Tang Clan, MF DOOM, and Bruce Lee as inspirations:
The founding of TAIGASTYLE, the way I spell it comes from the Wu-Tang Clan and their song is ‘Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nothing to F— With.’ In the beginning of it, the way it sounds like ‘TAIGASTYLE.’ That is my choice of how I spelled it. I put it in all caps because it’s the reference to an artist MF DOOM, who spelled his name in all caps. My color choices, like the pink, anytime I do graphics and my artwork, I always work in pinks for some reason, I don’t know what it is, but there’s it just keeps me focused and keeps my eyes and a lot of times when I draw, I hand-draw everything, scan it in, and I’ll trace whatever it is in magenta. The black and yellow is a reference to both Wu-Tang Clan, Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, his jumpsuit, and Pittsburgh, of course. So like all these things come together and create TAIGASTYLE and loving all different styles of wrestling from Lucha Libre, to World of Sport, to Japanese style, and I combined them.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)