NFL legend and two-time Super Bowl champion James Harrison recently spoke with the Patriots Wire to hype his appearance as Apocalypse in the Starz series Heels starring Stephen Amell. During the interview Harrison broke down the key differences between wrestling and football, stating that while the NFL is harder there is nothing fake about stepping into the squared circle. Highlights are below.
Compares playing in the NFL to performing as a wrestler:
“It’s still way harder to be a professional football player than it is to be a professional wrestler, because the person that I’m wrestling with is helping me do the things that I’m trying to do against them. They’re actually helping me to do that and we’re trying to do that as safe as possible and as (painless) as possible. Whereas, when I’m playing NFL football, this guy is not trying to help me with nothing. He’s fighting with every ounce of his being to not let me get my job done, just like I’m fighting with him so he can’t get his job done. Yeah, we’re the opposite. (In wrestling), we’re trying to make it look like it hurt, even though it doesn’t.”
How wrestling is not fake and a wrestler endures a bunch of punishment:
“The only thing that’s fake about wrestling is that you know the outcome of that match. You still have to hit that mat. You get those bumps and bruises before you get to that predetermined outcome. And that mat is not soft. It’s not forgiving. We had one of our co-stars — our lead Stephen Amell — he had a compound fracture of his spine in a stunt. He was out for six weeks.”